Physics: a short history from quintessence to quarks

by J. L. Heilbron

Overview

How does the physics we know today - a highly professionalised enterprise, inextricably linked to government and industry - link back to its origins as a liberal art in Ancient Greece? What is the path that leads from the old philosophy of nature and its concern with humankind's place in the universe to modern massive international projects that hunt down fundamental particles and industrial laboratories that manufacture marvels?

J. L. Heilbron's fascinating history of physics introduces us to Islamic astronomers and mathematicians, calculating the size of the earth whilst their caliphs conquered much of it; to medieval scholar-theologians investigating light; to Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton, measuring, and trying to explain, the universe. We visit the 'House of Wisdom' in 9th-century Baghdad; Europe's first universities; the courts of the Renaissance; the Scientific Revolution and the academies of the 18th century; the increasingly specialised world of 20th and 21st century science.

Highlighting the shifting relationship between physics, philosophy, mathematics, and technology — and the implications for humankind's self-understanding — Heilbron explores the changing place and purpose of physics in the cultures and societies that have nurtured it over the centuries.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198746850
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	01/04/2016
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.80(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

J. L. Heilbron is Professor of History, Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley. He was educated at the University of California, Berkeley, in physics and history; and began teaching at the University of Pennsylvania in 1964. He returned to Berkeley in 1967, where he rose to become professor of history and vice chancellor. After retiring in 1994 Heilbron taught sporadically at Caltech and Yale, and lived mostly around Oxford, where he has been Senior research Fellow at Worcester College and the Oxford Museum for History of Science. He has written several books for Oxford University Press, including Galileo (2010) and Love, Literature, and the Quantum Atom: Niels Bohr's 1913 trilogy revisited (2013), with Finn Aaserud.

Table of Contents

Introduction
1: Invention and Diversity in Greece and Rome
2: Selection and Development in Islam
3: Domestication in the West
4: A Second Creation
5: Classical Physics and its Cure
6: From Old World to New
7: By Way of Conclusion
References and Further Reading
Index

Editorial Reviews

"This title will engage those interested in history and in the philosophy of science." —Library Journal

"Heilbron leaves us rooted in lived reality. "Physics has given civilization a somber, disturbing, and challenging world picture, many fertile and some terrifying inventions, and notice of responsibility for the outcome of the human story." If [Physics], too, outsells Fifty Shades, there is hope for humanity yet." —Nature

"readers will applaud Heilbron for what he tells us-concisely, lucidly, insightfully-about an epoch-shaping science." — Booklist starred review

From the Publisher

2015-09-15
A brief treatment of mankind's comprehension of the physical universe, from ancient Greek cosmologists to modern particle physicists. Heilbron (Emeritus, History/Univ. of California; Galileo, 2010, etc.) writes that modern physics "has given civilization a somber, disturbing, and challenging world picture, many fertile and some terrifying inventions, and notice of responsibility for the outcome of the human story." He credits Aristotle with identifying the guiding principle that has governed scientific inquiry for more than two millennia: the belief "that the natural world runs on law-like principles discoverable by the human mind and immune from interruption or cancellation by meddling gods and demons." The book begins with a discussion of the Greek division of the universe into an earthly, terrestrial realm in which change occurs and an eternal "quintessential" heavenly realm. For them, there is an "absolute dichotomy between the laws of terrestrial and celestial physics." The author quickly touches on the scientific advances of the Arabic world, in the application of mathematics to astronomy and mechanics. From the 12th to the 16th centuries, Greek and Arab scientific writings were translated into Latin and became more available in the West. This inspired a scientific renaissance, with Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler setting the stage for Newton's comprehensive unification of celestial and terrestrial physics. "As Newton acknowledged," writes Heilbron, "he had not assigned a physical cause to gravitation, but had recourse to a mathematical fiction, an immediate action at a distance." In the 19th century, the synthesis of light and electrodynamics by Faraday and Maxwell provided the basis for the emergence of nuclear physics. The paradoxical interchangeability between waves and particles reintroduced a fundamental dichotomy due to the limitation on the accuracy of efforts to simultaneously measure a particle's position and momentum. The author's brush-stroke treatment of scientific advances over more than 2,000 years is likely to frustrate readers not already acquainted with the material, and he unfortunately provides few fresh insights for those already in the know. The description of three leading scientists in the postwar period as "Jewish cosmopolitan-extravert types" may also raise some eyebrows. A disappointing effort to encapsulate the history of modern physics.

Kirkus Reviews