Download or read book Theory Construction and Selection in Modern Physics written by James T. Cushing and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1990 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Analyses what criteria should determine how scientific theories are selected and justified.
Download or read book Theory construction and selection in modern physics written by James Thomas Cushing and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Foundations Of Modern Physics 1990 The Quantum Measurement Theory And Its Philosophical Implications Proceedings Of The Symposium written by Lahti Pekka and published by #N/A. This book was released on 1990-12-31 with total page 540 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The theory of quantum mechanical measuring process has been a subject of increasing research interest during recent years. The revival of interest in it was encouraged during the 1980's due to the advances on the formal and conceptual structures of quantum mechanics, accompanied with new experimental possibilities and technological demands, as well as due to new ideas on the interpretation of the theory. This proceedings is devoted to reviewing the present situation on quantum measurement theory and discussing the related philosophical implications.
Download or read book Idealization IX Idealization in Contemporary Physics written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-05-30 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here is presented for the first time a comprehensive review and analysis of the several roles played by idealization procedures in the logic, mathematics and models that lie at the heart of modern, twentieth century physics. It is only through idealization of one form or another that the objects and processes of modern physics become tractable. The essays in this volume will be of interest to all those who are concerned with the uses of models in physics, and the relationships between models and the real world. The essays in this volume cover the role of idealization in all the main areas of modern physics, ranging from quantum theory, relativity theory and cosmology to chaos theory.
Download or read book The Philosophy of Science written by Sahotra Sarkar and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 1012 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first in-depth reference to the field that combines scientific knowledge with philosophical inquiry, this encyclopedia brings together a team of leading scholars to provide nearly 150 entries on the essential concepts in the philosophy of science. The areas covered include biology, chemistry, epistemology and metaphysics, physics, psychology and mind, the social sciences, and key figures in the combined studies of science and philosophy. (Midwest).
Download or read book The Philosophy of Science N Z Index written by Sahotra Sarkar and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2006 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first in-depth reference to the field that combines scientific knowledge with philosophical inquiry, this encyclopedia brings together a team of leading scholars to provide nearly 150 entries on the essential concepts in the philosophy of science. The areas covered include biology, chemistry, epistemology and metaphysics, physics, psychology and mind, the social sciences, and key figures in the combined studies of science and philosophy. (Midwest).
Download or read book Bohmian Mechanics and Quantum Theory An Appraisal written by J.T. Cushing and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 1996-09-30 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We are often told that quantum phenomena demand radical revisions of our scientific world view and that no physical theory describing well defined objects, such as particles described by their positions, evolving in a well defined way, let alone deterministically, can account for such phenomena. The great majority of physicists continue to subscribe to this view, despite the fact that just such a deterministic theory, accounting for all of the phe nomena of nonrelativistic quantum mechanics, was proposed by David Bohm more than four decades ago and has arguably been around almost since the inception of quantum mechanics itself. Our purpose in asking colleagues to write the essays for this volume has not been to produce a Festschrift in honor of David Bohm (worthy an undertaking as that would have been) or to gather together a collection of papers simply stating uncritically Bohm's views on quantum mechanics. The central theme around which the essays in this volume are arranged is David Bohm's version of quantum mechanics. It has by now become fairly standard practice to refer to his theory as Bohmian mechanics and to the larger conceptual framework within which this is located as the causal quantum theory program. While it is true that one can have reservations about the appropriateness of these specific labels, both do elicit distinc tive images characteristic of the key concepts of these approaches and such terminology does serve effectively to contrast this class of theories with more standard formulations of quantum theory.
Download or read book Spooky Action at a Distance written by George Musser and published by Scientific American / Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2015-11-03 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Long-listed for the 2016 PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award “An important book that provides insight into key new developments in our understanding of the nature of space, time and the universe. It will repay careful study.” —John Gribbin, The Wall Street Journal “An endlessly surprising foray into the current mother of physics' many knotty mysteries, the solving of which may unveil the weirdness of quantum particles, black holes, and the essential unity of nature.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) What is space? It isn't a question that most of us normally ask. Space is the venue of physics; it's where things exist, where they move and take shape. Yet over the past few decades, physicists have discovered a phenomenon that operates outside the confines of space and time: nonlocality-the ability of two particles to act in harmony no matter how far apart they may be. It appears to be almost magical. Einstein grappled with this oddity and couldn't come to terms with it, describing it as "spooky action at a distance." More recently, the mystery has deepened as other forms of nonlocality have been uncovered. This strange occurrence, which has direct connections to black holes, particle collisions, and even the workings of gravity, holds the potential to undermine our most basic understandings of physical reality. If space isn't what we thought it was, then what is it? In Spooky Action at a Distance, George Musser sets out to answer that question, offering a provocative exploration of nonlocality and a celebration of the scientists who are trying to explain it. Musser guides us on an epic journey into the lives of experimental physicists observing particles acting in tandem, astronomers finding galaxies that look statistically identical, and cosmologists hoping to unravel the paradoxes surrounding the big bang. He traces the often contentious debates over nonlocality through major discoveries and disruptions of the twentieth century and shows how scientists faced with the same undisputed experimental evidence develop wildly different explanations for that evidence. Their conclusions challenge our understanding of not only space and time but also the origins of the universe-and they suggest a new grand unified theory of physics. Delightfully readable, Spooky Action at a Distance is a mind-bending voyage to the frontiers of modern physics that will change the way we think about reality.
Download or read book Quantum Mechanics written by James T. Cushing and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1994-11 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why does one theory "succeed" while another, possibly clearer interpretation, fails? By exploring two observationally equivalent yet conceptually incompatible views of quantum mechanics, James T. Cushing shows how historical contingency can be crucial to determining a theory's construction and its position among competing views. Since the late 1920s, the theory formulated by Niels Bohr and his colleagues at Copenhagen has been the dominant interpretation of quantum mechanics. Yet an alternative interpretation, rooted in the work of Louis de Broglie in the early 1920s and reformulated and extended by David Bohm in the 1950s, equally well explains the observational data. Through a detailed historical and sociological study of the physicists who developed different theories of quantum mechanics, the debates within and between opposing camps, and the receptions given to each theory, Cushing shows that despite the preeminence of the Copenhagen view, the Bohm interpretation cannot be ignored. Cushing contends that the Copenhagen interpretation became widely accepted not because it is a better explanation of subatomic phenomena than is Bohm's, but because it happened to appear first. Focusing on the philosophical, social, and cultural forces that shaped one of the most important developments in modern physics, this provocative book examines the role that timing can play in the establishment of theory and explanation.
Download or read book Constitutions of Matter written by Martin H. Krieger and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1998-04-28 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Krieger's lucid discussions will help students of physics and applied mathematics appreciate the larger physical issues behind the mathematical details of modern physics. Historians and philosophers of science will gain deeper insights into how theoretical physicists do science, while technically advanced general readers will get a rare, behind-the-scenes glimpse into the world of modern physics.
Download or read book The Foundation of Reality written by David Glick and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020-04-30 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are space and time fundamental features of our world or might they emerge from something else? The Foundation of Reality brings together metaphysicians and philosophers of physics working on space, time, and fundamentality to address this timely question. Recent developments in the interpretation of quantum mechanics and the understanding of certain approaches to quantum gravity have led philosophers of physics to propose that space and time might be emergent rather than fundamental. But such discussions are often conducted without engagement with those working on fundamentality and related issues in contemporary metaphysics. This book aims to correct this oversight. The diverse contributions to this volume address topics including the nature of fundamentality, the relation of space and time to quantum entanglement, and space and time in theories of quantum gravity. Only through consideration of a range of different approaches to the topic can we hope to get clear on the status of space and time in our contemporary understanding of physical reality.
Download or read book Heisenberg s 1958 Weltformel and the Roots of Post Empirical Physics written by Alexander S. Blum and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-05-14 with total page 66 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents the first detailed account of Werner Heisenberg’s failed attempt to find a theory of everything in the autumn of his career. It further investigates what we can learn from his failure in relation to the search for a final theory of physics, an endeavour that continues to define research in fundamental physics to this day. Thereby it provides the first historically informed contribution to the current debate on post-empirical physics and the state of particle physics.
Download or read book Advanced Modern Physics written by John Dirk Walecka and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2010 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Building on the author's introduction to modern physics, this volume focuses on the reformulation of quantum mechanics, angular momentum, scattering theory, lagrangian field theory, symmetries, Feynman rules, quantum electrodynamics, including higher-order contributions, path integrals & canonical transformations for quantum systems.
Download or read book From Current Algebra to Quantum Chromodynamics written by Tian Yu Cao and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-10-14 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The advent of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) in the early 1970s was one of the most important events in twentieth-century science. This book examines the conceptual steps that were crucial to the rise of QCD, placing them in historical context against the background of debates that were ongoing between the bootstrap approach and composite modeling, and between mathematical and realistic conceptions of quarks. It explains the origins of QCD in current algebra and its development through high-energy experiments, model-building, mathematical analysis and conceptual synthesis. Addressing a range of complex physical, philosophical and historiographical issues in detail, this book will interest graduate students and researchers in physics and in the history and philosophy of science.
Download or read book Wave Particle Duality written by Franco Selleri and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume tries to continue a tradition of reviews of the contemporary research on the foundations of modern physics begun by the volume on the Einstein Podolsky-Rosen paradox that appeared a few years ago. (I) Its publication coin cides with the hundredth anniversary of de Broglie's birth (1892), a very welcome superposition, given the lasting influence of the Einstein-de Broglie conception of wave-particle duality. The present book, however, contains papers based on a broad spectrum of basic ideas, some even opposite to those that Einstein and de Broglie would have liked. The order of the contributions in this book is alphabetical by first author's name. It is important here to stress the presence of three reviews of fundamental experimental data, by Hasselbach (electron interferometry), Rauch (neutron interferometry), and Tonomura (Aharonov-Bohm effect). Hasselbach reviews several interesting experiments performed in 1Ubingen with the electron biprism interferometer. Wave-particle duality is brought out in striking ways, e. g., in the buildup of an interference pattern out of single events. The Sagnac effect for electrons is also discussed. The chapter by Rauch presents interesting results on wave-particle duality for neutrons. Of particular interest are the differences between stochastic and deterministic absorption in the neutron interferometer, and the concrete evidence for the quantum-mechanical 41T-symmetry of spinors. In the short chapter by Tonomura, conclusive evidence for the reality of the Aharonov Bohm effect is reviewed, collected in experiments based on advanced technologies of electron holography and microlithography.
Download or read book Higher Speculations written by Helge Kragh and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-01-07 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout history, people have tried to construct 'theories of everything': highly ambitious attempts to understand nature in its totality. This account presents these theories in their historical contexts, from little-known hypotheses from the past to modern developments such as the theory of superstrings, the anthropic principle, and ideas of many universes, and uses them to problematize the limits of scientific knowledge. Do claims to theories of everything belong to science at all? Which are the epistemic standards on which an alleged scientific theory of the universe - or the multiverse - is to be judged? Such questions are currently being discussed by physicists and cosmologists, but rarely within a historical perspective. This book argues that these questions have a history and that knowledge of the historical development of 'higher speculations' may inform and qualify the current debate on the nature and limits of scientific explanation.
Download or read book The Quantum Labyrinth written by D.J. Hoekzema and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the outset of the research leading to this book I held a position somewhere close to 'the standard Copenhagen interpretation' of QM. I was strongly attracted to, in particular, the philosophy of Niels Bohr. However, being aware of some of the problematic sides and ambiguities of his views and of new developments which have taken place in QM after his time, the main challenge would be to develop a more up to date version version of his approach and express it in a philosophically unobjectionable way. Traces of this original attitude can still be found in views I hold nowadays. For instance, I think that I now know a satisfactory and correct way of dealing with features like 'complementarity', and I still see this as a relevant subject. In many other respects, however, there have been major changes in my position. In fact, during certain stages of my research my views simply started moving and kept on doing so at an irritating pace and for uncomfortably long periods of time. I learned, for example that at least some of the classical ideas about theory structure are much better than I had realized, and cannot just be pushed aside for anything even as impressive as empirical success.
