Download or read book Weimar Culture and Quantum Mechanics written by Alexei Kojevnikov and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2011 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume reprints Paul Forman's classic papers on the history of physics in post-World War I Germany and the invention of quantum mechanics.
Download or read book Weimar Culture and Quantum Mechanics written by Forman and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Annotation. This volume reprints Paul Forman's classic papers on the history of physics in post-World War I Germany and the invention of quantum mechanics. The Forman thesis has become famous as the first argument in favor of the cultural conditioning of scientific knowledge, in particular for its demonstration of the historical connection between the culture of Weimar Germany known for its irrationality and antiscientism and the emerging concept of quantum acausality. At the 2007 international conference in Vancouver, Canada, leading historians of physics discussed the implications of the Forman thesis in the historiography of modern science. Their papers collected in this volume represent a cutting-edge research on the history of quantum revolution.
Download or read book Weimar Culture And Quantum Mechanics Selected Papers By Paul Forman And Contemporary Perspectives On The Forman Thesis written by Alexei B Kojevnikov and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2011-05-11 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume reprints Paul Forman's classic papers on the history of the scientific profession in post-World War I Germany and the invention of quantum mechanics. The Forman thesis became famous for its demonstration of the cultural conditioning of scientific knowledge, in particular by showing the historical connection between the culture of Weimar Germany — known for its irrationality and antiscientism — and the emerging concept of quantum acausality. From the moment of its publication, Forman's research provoked intense historical and philosophical debates. In 2007, participants at an international conference in Vancouver, Canada, discussed the implications of the Forman thesis for contemporary historiography. Their contributions collected in this volume represent cutting-edge research on the history of the quantum revolution and of German science.
Download or read book The Quantum Dissidents written by Olival Freire Junior and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-12-26 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book tells the fascinating story of the people and events behind the turbulent changes in attitudes to quantum theory in the second half of the 20th century. The huge success of quantum mechanics as a predictive theory has been accompanied, from the very beginning, by doubts and controversy about its foundations and interpretation. This book looks in detail at how research on foundations evolved after WWII, when it was revived, until the mid 1990s, when most of this research merged into the technological promise of quantum information. It is the story of the quantum dissidents, the scientists who brought this subject from the margins of physics into its mainstream. It is also a history of concepts, experiments, and techniques, and of the relationships between physics and the world at large, touching on themes such as the Cold War, McCarthyism, Zhdanovism, and the unrest of the late 1960s.
Download or read book Agricultural Biocatalysis written by Peter Jeschke and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2022-12-22 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Agricultural biocatalysis is of immense scientific interest nowadays owing to its increasing importance in the efforts for more sustainable agriculture while optimizing environmental impacts. Plant compatibility is essential for developing eco-friendly and sustainable microbial products. Therefore, our search for novel technologies ought to be in the foreground, for which a thorough understanding of biochemical processes, applications of agricultural enzymes, traits, and viruses should get the highest priority. Volumes 8 to 10 in this series compile the recent research on agricultural biocatalysis by interdisciplinary teams from international institutes for chemistry, biochemistry, biotechnology, and materials and chemical engineering, who have been investigating agricultural-biocatalytic topics related to biochemical conversions or bioremediation, and modern biological and chemical applications exemplified by the use of selected and highly innovative agricultural enzymes, traits, and viruses. The editors are prominent researchers in agrochemistry and theoretical biophysical chemistry, and these three volumes are useful references for the students and researchers in the fields of agrochemistry, biochemistry, biology, biophysical chemistry, natural product chemistry, materials, and drug design. Volume 8 covers the research on biosynthesis, biocatalysis, and photosynthesis aspects for use in agrochemistry, including nano-biocatalytic processing, atrazine toxicity, and theoretical studies in biocatalysis and biological processes.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of the History of Quantum Interpretations written by Guido Bacciagaluppi and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022 with total page 1311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Crucial to most research in physics, as well as leading to the development of inventions such as the transistor and the laser, quantum mechanics approaches its centenary with an impressive record. However, the field has also long been the subject of ongoing debates about the foundations and interpretation of the theory, referred to as the quantum controversy. This Oxford Handbook offers a historical overview of the contrasts which have been at the heart of quantum physics for the last 100 years. Drawing on the wide-ranging expertise of several contributors working across physics, history, and philosophy, the handbook outlines the main theories and interpretations of quantum physics. It goes on to tackle the key controversies surrounding the field, touching on issues such as determinism, realism, locality, classicality, information, measurements, mathematical foundations, and the links between quantum theory and gravity. This engaging introduction is an essential guide for all those interested in the history of scientific controversies and history of quantum physics. It also provides a fascinating examination of the potential of quantum physics to influence new discoveries and advances in fields such quantum information and computing.
Download or read book Science and Technology in the Global Cold War written by Naomi Oreskes and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2014-10-31 with total page 467 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Investigations of how the global Cold War shaped national scientific and technological practices in fields from biomedicine to rocket science. The Cold War period saw a dramatic expansion of state-funded science and technology research. Government and military patronage shaped Cold War technoscientific practices, imposing methods that were project oriented, team based, and subject to national-security restrictions. These changes affected not just the arms race and the space race but also research in agriculture, biomedicine, computer science, ecology, meteorology, and other fields. This volume examines science and technology in the context of the Cold War, considering whether the new institutions and institutional arrangements that emerged globally constrained technoscientific inquiry or offered greater opportunities for it. The contributors find that whatever the particular science, and whatever the political system in which that science was operating, the knowledge that was produced bore some relation to the goals of the nation-state. These goals varied from nation to nation; weapons research was emphasized in the United States and the Soviet Union, for example, but in France and China scientific independence and self-reliance dominated. The contributors also consider to what extent the changes to science and technology practices in this era were produced by the specific politics, anxieties, and aspirations of the Cold War. Contributors Elena Aronova, Erik M. Conway, Angela N. H. Creager, David Kaiser, John Krige, Naomi Oreskes, George Reisch, Sigrid Schmalzer, Sonja D. Schmid, Matthew Shindell, Asif A. Siddiqi, Zuoyue Wang, Benjamin Wilson
Download or read book David Bohm written by Olival Freire Junior and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-09-05 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This authoritative biography addresses the life and work of the quantum physicist David Bohm. Although quantum physics is considered the soundest physical theory, its strange and paradoxical features have challenged - and continue to challenge - even the brightest thinkers. David Bohm dedicated his entire life to enhancing our understanding of quantum mysteries, in particular quantum nonlocality. His work took place at the height of the cultural/political upheaval in the 1950's, which led him to become the most notable American scientist to seek exile in the last century. The story of his life is as fascinating as his ideas on the quantum world are appealing.
Download or read book Free Will Action written by Filip Grgić and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-11-14 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book consists of eleven new essays that provide new insights into classical and contemporary issues surrounding free will and human agency. They investigate topics such as the nature of practical knowledge and its role in intentional action; mental content and explanations of action; recent arguments for libertarianism; the situationist challenge to free will; freedom and a theory of narrative configuration; the moral responsibility of the psychopath; and free will and the indeterminism of quantum mechanics. Also tackling some historical precursors of contemporary debates, taken together these essays demonstrate the need for an approach that recognizes the multifaceted nature of free will. This book provides essential reading for anyone interested in the current scholarship on free will.
Download or read book Quantum Language and the Migration of Scientific Concepts written by Jennifer Burwell and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-02-16 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How highly abstract quantum concepts were represented in language, and how these concepts were later taken up by philosophers, literary critics, and new-age gurus. The principles of quantum physics—and the strange phenomena they describe—are represented most precisely in highly abstract algebraic equations. Why, then, did these mathematically driven concepts compel founders of the field, particularly Erwin Schrödinger, Niels Bohr, and Werner Heisenberg, to spend so much time reflecting on ontological, epistemological, and linguistic concerns? What is it about quantum concepts that appeals to latter-day Eastern mystics, poststructuralist critics, and get-rich-quick schemers? How did their interpretations and misinterpretations of quantum phenomena reveal their own priorities? In this book, Jennifer Burwell examines these questions and considers what quantum phenomena—in the context of the founders' debates over how to describe them—reveal about the relationship between everyday experience, perception, and language. Drawing on linguistic, literary, and philosophical traditions, Burwell illuminates representational and linguistic problems posed by quantum concepts—the fact, for example, that quantum phenomena exist only as probabilities or tendencies toward being and cannot be said to exist in a particular time and place. She traces the emergence of quantum theory as an analytic tool in literary criticism, in particular the use of wave/particle duality in interpretations of gender differences in the novels of Virginia Woolf and critics' connection of Bohr's Principle of Complementarity to poetic form; she examines the “quantum mysticism” of Fritjof Capra and Gary Zukav; and she concludes by analyzing “nuclear discourse” in the context of quantum concepts, arguing that it, too, adopts a language of the unthinkable and the indescribable.
Download or read book A Phenomenological Approach to Quantum Mechanics written by French and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-02-28 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Steven French suggests a radical new approach to the understanding of quantum physics, derived from Husserl's phenomenological philosophy. In 1939 two physicists, Fritz London and Edmund Bauer, published an account of measurement in quantum mechanics. Widely cited, their 'little book' featured centrally in an important debate over the role of consciousness in that process. However, it has been fundamentally misunderstood, both in that debate and beyond. Steven French argues that London, in particular, approached the measurement process from the perspective of Husserlian phenomenology, which he had studied as a student and which he retained an interest in throughout his career. This casts his work with Bauer in an entirely novel light and suggests a radical alternative understanding of quantum mechanics in which consciousness still plays a role but one that is fundamentally different than previously conceived. Most interpretations of the theory approach it on the basis of the so-called 'analytic' tradition in philosophy. However, there has recently been a surge of interest in 'continental' approaches and this book offers a significant new contribution to such developments. Intertwining history and philosophy, it presents London's background in physics and phenomenology, together with an outline of the latter as developed by Husserl, Gurwitsch, Merleau-Ponty and others, as well as a detailed analysis of the work on measurement with Bauer. The book concludes by comparing the London and Bauer understanding with that afforded by Fuch's QBism, Everett's 'Many Worlds' interpretation and Rovelli's Relational Quantum Mechanics. It is hoped that this exploratory work will open up new avenues of thought with regard to one of our most fundamental physical theories.
Download or read book Sciences in the Universities of Europe Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries written by Ana Simões and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-04-20 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on sciences in the universities of Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the chapters in it provide an overview, mostly from the point of view of the history of science, of the different ways universities dealt with the institutionalization of science teaching and research. A useful book for understanding the deep changes that universities were undergoing in the last years of the 20th century. The book is organized around four central themes: 1) Universities in the longue durée; 2) Universities in diverse political contexts; 3) Universities and academic research; 4) Universities and discipline formation. The book is addressed at a broad readership which includes scholars and researchers in the field of General History, Cultural History, History of Universities, History of Education, History of Science and Technology, Science Policy, high school teachers, undergraduate and graduate students of sciences and humanities, and the general interested public.
Download or read book Weimar Thought written by Peter E. Gordon and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive look at the intellectual and cultural innovations of the Weimar period During its short lifespan, the Weimar Republic (1918–33) witnessed an unprecedented flowering of achievements in many areas, including psychology, political theory, physics, philosophy, literary and cultural criticism, and the arts. Leading intellectuals, scholars, and critics—such as Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Bertolt Brecht, and Martin Heidegger—emerged during this time to become the foremost thinkers of the twentieth century. Even today, the Weimar era remains a vital resource for new intellectual movements. In this incomparable collection, Weimar Thought presents both the specialist and the general reader a comprehensive guide and unified portrait of the most important innovators, themes, and trends of this fascinating period. The book is divided into four thematic sections: law, politics, and society; philosophy, theology, and science; aesthetics, literature, and film; and general cultural and social themes of the Weimar period. The volume brings together established and emerging scholars from a remarkable array of fields, and each individual essay serves as an overview for a particular discipline while offering distinctive critical engagement with relevant problems and debates. Whether used as an introductory companion or advanced scholarly resource, Weimar Thought provides insight into the rich developments behind the intellectual foundations of modernity.
Download or read book The Routledge Handbook of Logical Empiricism written by Thomas Uebel and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2021-12-27 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Logical empiricism is a philosophical movement that flourished in the 1920s and 30s in Central Europe and in the 1940s and 50s in the United States. With its stated ambition to comprehend the revolutionary advances in the empirical and formal sciences of their day and to confront anti-modernist challenges to scientific reason itself, logical empiricism was never uncontroversial. Uniting key thinkers who often disagreed with one another but shared the aim to conceive of philosophy as part of the scientific enterprise, it left a rich and varied legacy that has only begun to be explored relatively recently. The Routledge Handbook of Logical Empiricism is an outstanding reference source to this challenging subject area, and the first collection of its kind. Comprising 41 chapters written by an international and interdisciplinary team of contributors, the Handbook is organized into four clear parts: The Cultural, Scientific and Philosophical Context and the Development of Logical Empiricism Characteristic Theses of and Specific Issues in Logical Empiricism Relations to Philosophical Contemporaries Leading Post-Positivist Criticisms and Legacy Essential reading for students and researchers in the history of twentieth-century philosophy, especially the history of analytical philosophy and the history of philosophy of science, the Handbook will also be of interest to those working in related areas of philosophy influenced by this important movement, including metaphysics and epistemology, philosophy of mind and philosophy of language.
Download or read book CERN Courier written by and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Shifting Paradigms written by Alexander Blum and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The publication of Thomas S. Kuhn's "Structure of Scientific Revolutions" in 1962 stands for a turning point in the history and philosophy of science. The repercussions of this work have rearticulated the theoretical framework of history and philosophy of science and have also generated discussions that contributed to the formation of the communities of historians as well as philosophers of science in many parts of the world. Different approaches to history of science have since emerged and most of them have the "Structure" as their reference point. In October 2012, a conference at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science brought together some of the historians of science whose work has played a decisive role in the ways history of science has evolved as a field of research in the past 50 years, both intellectually and institutionally. This volume gathers reflections by many of these historians on the history of the history of science, based on the presentations and discussions at the conference. The topics covered range from personal recollections of working with Thomas Kuhn to broad overviews of the historical development of the history of science as a discipline in the past half-century. The series Proceedings of the Max Planck Research Library for the History and Development of Knowledge presents the results of scientific meetings on current issues and supports further cooperation on these issues via an electronic platform. The volumes are available both as print-on-demand books and as open-access publications on the Internet. The material is freely accessible online at www.edition-open-access.de.
Download or read book The Historical and Physical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics written by Robert Golub and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-02-28 with total page 769 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following the path by which humanity learned quantum mechanics can lead to an improved teaching and understanding of the fundamental theory and the origins of its perceived limitations. The purpose of this textbook is to retrace the development of quantum mechanics by investigating primary sources (including original published papers and letters) with attention to their timing and influence. Placing the development of quantum mechanics in its historical context, from the nascent philosophical notions of matter, atoms, and void in Ancient Greece, to their scientific realization in the 19th and 20th centuries, the book culminates with an examination of the current state of the field and an introduction to quantum information and computing.