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Overview
In this book, physicist Victor J. Stenger makes the case that, in the final analysis, atoms and the void are all that exists.
The book begins with the story of the earliest atomists - the ancient Greek philosophers Leucippus, Democritus, and Epicurus, and the Latin poet Lucretius. As the author notes, the idea of elementary particles as the foundation of reality had many opponents throughout history - from Aristotle to Christian theologians and even some nineteenth-century chemists and philosophers. While theists today accept that the evidence for the atomic theory of matter is overwhelming, they reject the atheistic implications of that theory.
In conclusion, the author underscores the main point made throughout this work: the total absence of empirical facts and theoretical arguments to support the existence of any component to reality other than atoms and the void can be taken as proof beyond a reasonable doubt that such a component is nowhere to be found.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9781616147549 |
---|---|
Publisher: | Prometheus Books |
Publication date: | 04/09/2013 |
Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
Format: | NOOK Book |
Pages: | 332 |
Sales rank: | 1,034,454 |
File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
Table of Contents
Preface 11
Acknowledgments 19
1 Ancient Atomism 21
Defining Atomism 21
Leucippus and Democritus 23
Atoms and Gods 25
Atoms and the Senses 26
Late Night with Lederman 27
Atomism in Ancient India 28
Epicurus 30
Differences with Democritus 33
Post-Epicurean Atomism 33
Lucretius 35
The Antiatomists 42
2 Atoms Lost and Found 47
Atomism in Early Christianity 47
Atomism in the Middle Ages 49
Poggio and Lucretius 51
Gassendi 56
3 Atomism and the Scientific Revolution 61
The New World of Science 61
Galilean Relativity 65
The Principia 67
Particle Mechanics 70
Mechanical Philosophy 72
Primary and Secondary Qualities 73
Other Atomists 75
More Antiatomists 76
4 The Chemical Atom 79
From Alchemy to Chemistry 79
The Elements 83
The Chemical Atoms 84
The Chemical Opposition 86
The Philosophical Opposition 87
5 Atoms Revealed 91
Heat and Motion 91
The Heat Engine 93
Conservation of Energy and the First Law 95
The Mechanical Nature of Heat 97
Absolute Zero 99
The Second Law of Thermodynamics 100
Kinetic Theory 100
How Big Are Atoms? 102
Statistical Mechanics 104
The Arrow of Time 110
The Energetic Opposition 110
The Positivist Opposition 113
Evidence 117
6 Light and the Aether 119
The Nature of Light 119
The Aether 123
Fields 126
Electromagnetic Waves 130
The Demise of the Aether 131
Time and Space in Special Relativity 133
Defining Time and Space 137
Matter and Energy in Special Relativity 139
Invariance 140
Symmetry 141
The Source of Conservation Principles 142
7 Inside the Atom 145
Anomalies 145
Light Is Particles 147
The Rutherford Atom 150
The Bohr Atom and the Rise of Quantum Mechanics 152
Are Electrons Waves? 154
The New Quantum Mechanics 155
Spin 157
Dirac's Theory of the Electron 158
What Is the Wave Function? 159
The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle 160
Building the Elements 162
8 Inside the Nucleus 167
Nuclei 167
The Nuclear Forces 169
"Atomic" Energy 170
Nuclear Fusion 172
Nuclear Fission 174
Poisoning the Atmosphere 175
Nuclear Power 177
Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors 179
9 Quantum Fields 185
Physics in 1945 185
More Hydrogen Surprises 187
QED 188
Fields and Particles 194
10 The Rise of Particle Physics 197
Pion Exchange and the Strong Force 197
The Fermi Theory of the Weak Force 200
The Particle Explosion 202
New Conservation Principles 204
Broken Symmetries 206
"Nuclear Democracy" and The Tao of Physics 208
11 The Dreams that Stuff is Made of 213
The Quarks 213
Particles of the Standard Model 216
Gauge Symmetry 219
Forces in the Standard Model 222
The Higgs Boson 226
Making and Detecting the Higgs 229
Hunting the Higgs 231
Higgs Confirmed! 234
Mass 234
Grand Unification 236
Supersymmetry 238
12 Atoms and the Cosmos 241
After the Bang 241
Inflation 243
The Stuff of the Universe 246
What Is the Dark Matter? 248
Dark Energy 250
The Cosmological Constant Problem 252
Before the Bang 253
The Matter-Antimatter Puzzle 255
The Eternal Multiverse 256
Something about Nothing 257
13 Summary and Conclusions 261
They Had It (Mostly) Right 261
Matter 263
Materialism Deconstructed? 266
Field-Particle Unity 267
Wave-Particle Duality 269
Reduction and Emergence 270
The Role of Chance 272
The Cosmos 274
The Mind 275
No Higher Power 276
Notes 279
Bibliography 297
About the Author 309
Other Books Victor J. Stenger 313
Index 317