Of Things Visible and Invisible: From the Atom to Quarks - A Historical Journey Through the Conceptual Images of Matter

This book highlights the historical roots and important philosophical debates that accompanied the introduction of different theoretical entities. Understanding what we see through objects that we cannot perceive may seem a paradox. Yet it is precisely such elusive objects—to the point that they cannot be revealed, like the quarks—which make it possible to situate what we call matter in the sphere of the intelligible. The search for a fundamental unit or units to which the construction of t...