Fiction in the Quantum Universe

Fiction in the Quantum Universe PDF Author: Susan Strehle
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807864889
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 297

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this outstanding book Susan Strehle argues that a new fiction has developed from the influence of modern physics. She calls this new fiction actualism, and within that framework she offers a critical analysis of major novels by Thomas Pynchon, Robert Coover, William Gaddis, John Barth, Margaret Atwood, and Donald Barthelme. According to Strehle, the actualists balance attention to questions of art with an engaged meditation on the external, actual world. While these actualist novels diverge markedly from realistic practice, Strehle claims that they do so in order to reflect more acutely what we now understand as real. Reality is no longer "realistic"; in the new physical or quantum universe, reality is discontinuous, energetic, relative, statistical, subjectively seen, and uncertainly known -- all terms taken from new physics. Actualist fiction is characterized by incompletions, indeterminacy, and "open" endings unsatisfying to the readerly wish for fulfilled promises and completed patterns. Gravity's Rainbow, for example, ends not with a period but with a dash. Strehle argues that such innovations in narrative reflect on twentieth-century history, politics, science, and discourse.

Fiction in the Quantum Universe

Fiction in the Quantum Universe PDF Author: Susan Strehle
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807864889
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 297

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this outstanding book Susan Strehle argues that a new fiction has developed from the influence of modern physics. She calls this new fiction actualism, and within that framework she offers a critical analysis of major novels by Thomas Pynchon, Robert Coover, William Gaddis, John Barth, Margaret Atwood, and Donald Barthelme. According to Strehle, the actualists balance attention to questions of art with an engaged meditation on the external, actual world. While these actualist novels diverge markedly from realistic practice, Strehle claims that they do so in order to reflect more acutely what we now understand as real. Reality is no longer "realistic"; in the new physical or quantum universe, reality is discontinuous, energetic, relative, statistical, subjectively seen, and uncertainly known -- all terms taken from new physics. Actualist fiction is characterized by incompletions, indeterminacy, and "open" endings unsatisfying to the readerly wish for fulfilled promises and completed patterns. Gravity's Rainbow, for example, ends not with a period but with a dash. Strehle argues that such innovations in narrative reflect on twentieth-century history, politics, science, and discourse.

Fiction in the Quantum Universe

Fiction in the Quantum Universe PDF Author: Susan Strehle
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 9780807843659
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 300

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this outstanding book Susan Strehle argues that a new fiction has developed from the influence of modern physics. She calls this new fiction actualism, and within that framework she offers a critical analysis of major novels by Thomas Pynchon, Robert Coover, William Gaddis, John Barth, Margaret Atwood, and Donald Barthelme. According to Strehle, the actualists balance attention to questions of art with an engaged meditation on the external, actual world. While these actualist novels diverge markedly from realistic practice, Strehle claims that they do so in order to reflect more acutely what we now understand as real. Reality is no longer "realistic"; in the new physical or quantum universe, reality is discontinuous, energetic, relative, statistical, subjectively seen, and uncertainly known_all terms taken from new physics. Actualist fiction is characterized by incompletions, indeterminacy, and "open" endings unsatisfying to the readerly wish for fulfilled promises and completed patterns. Gravity's Rainbow, for example, ends not with a period but with a dash. Strehle argues that such innovations in narrative reflect on twentieth-century history, politics, science, and discourse.

The Quantum Universe

The Quantum Universe PDF Author: Brian Cox
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 0306820609
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Get Book Here

Book Description
International bestselling authors Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw's fascinating, entertaining, and clear introduction to quantum mechanics In The Quantum Universe, Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw approach the world of quantum mechanics in the same way they did in Why Does E=mc2? and make fundamental scientific principles accessible-and fascinating-to everyone.The subatomic realm has a reputation for weirdness, spawning any number of profound misunderstandings, journeys into Eastern mysticism, and woolly pronouncements on the interconnectedness of all things. Cox and Forshaw's contention? There is no need for quantum mechanics to be viewed this way. There is a lot of mileage in the "weirdness" of the quantum world, and it often leads to confusion and, frankly, bad science. The Quantum Universe cuts through the Wu Li and asks what observations of the natural world made it necessary, how it was constructed, and why we are confident that, for all its apparent strangeness, it is a good theory. The quantum mechanics of The Quantum Universe provide a concrete model of nature that is comparable in its essence to Newton's laws of motion, Maxwell's theory of electricity and magnetism, and Einstein's theory of relativity.

Achilles in the Quantum Universe

Achilles in the Quantum Universe PDF Author: Richard Morris
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0805047794
Category : Astronomy
Languages : en
Pages : 239

Get Book Here

Book Description
Discusses how philosophers, logicians, mathematicians, and scientists throughout history have attempted to define infinity, and how each attempt has driven the advancement of physics and mathematics, including the development of relativity and quantum mechanics.

Mysteries of the Quantum Universe

Mysteries of the Quantum Universe PDF Author: THIBAULT. BURNIAT DAMOUR (MATHIEU.)
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780141985176
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 160

Get Book Here

Book Description
Famous explorer Bob and his dog Rick have been around the world and even to the Moon, but their travels through the quantum universe show them the greatest wonders they've ever seen. As they follow their tour guide, the giddy letter h (also known as the Planck constant), Bob and Rick discover that the universe is bouncy, have crepes with Max Planck, talk to Einstein about atoms, visit Louis de Broglie in his castle, and hang out with Heisenberg on Heligoland. On the way, we find out that a dog - much like a cat - can be both dead and alive, the gaze of a mouse can change the universe, and a comic book can actually make quantum physics fun, easy to understand and downright enchanting.

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe (Enhanced Edition)

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe (Enhanced Edition) PDF Author: Charles Yu
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0307379884
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 257

Get Book Here

Book Description
This enhanced eBook includes video, audio, photographic, and linked content, as well as a bonus short story. Hear TAMMY talk. Learn the origins of Minor Universe 31. See the TM-31. Take a trip in it. Photos and illustrations appear as hyperlinked endnotes. Video and audio are embedded directly in text. *Video and audio may not play on all readers. Check your user manual for details. National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Award winner Charles Yu delivers his debut novel, a razor-sharp, ridiculously funny, and utterly touching story of a son searching for his father . . . through quantum space–time. Minor Universe 31 is a vast story-space on the outskirts of fiction, where paradox fluctuates like the stock market, lonely sexbots beckon failed protagonists, and time travel is serious business. Every day, people get into time machines and try to do the one thing they should never do: change the past. That’s where Charles Yu, time travel technician—part counselor, part gadget repair man—steps in. He helps save people from themselves. Literally. When he’s not taking client calls or consoling his boss, Phil, who could really use an upgrade, Yu visits his mother (stuck in a one-hour cycle of time, she makes dinner over and over and over) and searches for his father, who invented time travel and then vanished. Accompanied by TAMMY, an operating system with low self-esteem, and Ed, a nonexistent but ontologically valid dog, Yu sets out, and back, and beyond, in order to find the one day where he and his father can meet in memory. He learns that the key may be found in a book he got from his future self. It’s called How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, and he’s the author. And somewhere inside it is the information that could help him—in fact it may even save his life. Wildly new and adventurous, Yu’s debut is certain to send shock waves of wonder through literary space–time.

What Is Real?

What Is Real? PDF Author: Adam Becker
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465096069
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 418

Get Book Here

Book Description
"A thorough, illuminating exploration of the most consequential controversy raging in modern science." --New York Times Book Review An Editor's Choice, New York Times Book Review Longlisted for PEN/E.O. Wilson Prize for Literary Science Writing Longlisted for Goodreads Choice Award Every physicist agrees quantum mechanics is among humanity's finest scientific achievements. But ask what it means, and the result will be a brawl. For a century, most physicists have followed Niels Bohr's solipsistic and poorly reasoned Copenhagen interpretation. Indeed, questioning it has long meant professional ruin, yet some daring physicists, such as John Bell, David Bohm, and Hugh Everett, persisted in seeking the true meaning of quantum mechanics. What Is Real? is the gripping story of this battle of ideas and the courageous scientists who dared to stand up for truth. "An excellent, accessible account." --Wall Street Journal "Splendid. . . . Deeply detailed research, accompanied by charming anecdotes about the scientists." --Washington Post

Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You

Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You PDF Author: Marcus Chown
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 057124601X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 216

Get Book Here

Book Description
The two towering achievements of modern physics are quantum theory and Einstein's general theory of relativity. Together, they explain virtually everything about the world we live in. But, almost a century after their advent, most people haven't the slightest clue what either is about. Did you know that there's so much empty space inside matter that the entire human race could be squeezed into the volume of a sugar cube? Or that you grow old more quickly on the top floor of a building than on the ground floor? And did you realize that 1% of the static on a TV tuned between stations is the relic of the Big Bang? Marcus Chown, the bestselling author of What A Wonderful World and the Solar System app, explains all with characteristic wit, colour and clarity, from the Big Bang and Einstein's general theory of relativity to probability, gravity and quantum theory. 'Chown discusses special and general relativity, probablity waves, quantum entanglement, gravity and the Big Bang, with humour and beautiful clarity, always searching for the most vivid imagery.' Steven Poole, Guardian

The Quantum Story

The Quantum Story PDF Author: Jim Baggott
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191604291
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 490

Get Book Here

Book Description
The twentieth century was defined by physics. From the minds of the world's leading physicists there flowed a river of ideas that would transport mankind to the pinnacle of wonderment and to the very depths of human despair. This was a century that began with the certainties of absolute knowledge and ended with the knowledge of absolute uncertainty. It was a century in which physicists developed weapons with the capacity to destroy our reality, whilst at the same time denying us the possibility that we can ever properly comprehend it. Almost everything we think we know about the nature of our world comes from one theory of physics. This theory was discovered and refined in the first thirty years of the twentieth century and went on to become quite simply the most successful theory of physics ever devised. Its concepts underpin much of the twenty-first century technology that we have learned to take for granted. But its success has come at a price, for it has at the same time completely undermined our ability to make sense of the world at the level of its most fundamental constituents. Rejecting the fundamental elements of uncertainty and chance implied by quantum theory, Albert Einstein once famously declared that 'God does not play dice'. Niels Bohr claimed that anybody who is not shocked by the theory has not understood it. The charismatic American physicist Richard Feynman went further: he claimed that nobody understands it. This is quantum theory, and this book tells its story. Jim Baggott presents a celebration of this wonderful yet wholly disconcerting theory, with a history told in forty episodes — significant moments of truth or turning points in the theory's development. From its birth in the porcelain furnaces used to study black body radiation in 1900, to the promise of stimulating new quantum phenomena to be revealed by CERN's Large Hadron Collider over a hundred years later, this is the extraordinary story of the quantum world. Oxford Landmark Science books are 'must-read' classics of modern science writing which have crystallized big ideas, and shaped the way we think.

The Dreams That Stuff Is Made Of

The Dreams That Stuff Is Made Of PDF Author: Stephen Hawking
Publisher: Running Press Adult
ISBN: 076244374X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1090

Get Book Here

Book Description
"God does not play dice with the universe." So said Albert Einstein in response to the first discoveries that launched quantum physics, as they suggested a random universe that seemed to violate the laws of common sense. This 20th-century scientific revolution completely shattered Newtonian laws, inciting a crisis of thought that challenged scientists to think differently about matter and subatomic particles.The Dreams That Stuff Is Made Of compiles the essential works from the scientists who sparked the paradigm shift that changed the face of physics forever, pushing our understanding of the universe on to an entirely new level of comprehension. Gathered in this anthology is the scholarship that shocked and befuddled the scientific world, including works by Niels Bohr, Max Planck, Werner Heisenberg, Max Born, Erwin Schrodinger, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Richard Feynman, as well as an introduction by today's most celebrated scientist, Stephen Hawking.