Contemporary Physics and the Limits of Knowledge PDF Download

Author: Morton Tavel
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 9780813530772
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
Tavel (physics, Vassar College) developed the text from a course for nonscience majors over many years. He draws analogies from the arts, humanities, and social sciences, and keeps the technical and mathematical details to the bare minimum. He does not provide a bibliography. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Author: Amit Hagar
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107062802
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
Novel conceptual analysis, fresh historical perspectives, and concrete physical examples illuminate one of the most thought-provoking topics in physics.

Author: John Horgan
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465050859
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
As staff writer for Scientific American, John Horgan has a window on contemporary science unsurpassed in all the world. Who else routinely interviews the likes of Lynn Margulis, Roger Penrose, Francis Crick, Richard Dawkins, Freeman Dyson, Murray Gell-Mann, Stephen Jay Gould, Stephen Hawking, Thomas Kuhn, Chris Langton, Karl Popper, Stephen Weinberg, and E.O. Wilson, with the freedom to probe their innermost thoughts? In The End Of Science, Horgan displays his genius for getting these larger-than-life figures to be simply human, and scientists, he writes, "are rarely so human . . . so at there mercy of their fears and desires, as when they are confronting the limits of knowledge."This is the secret fear that Horgan pursues throughout this remarkable book: Have the big questions all been answered? Has all the knowledge worth pursuing become known? Will there be a final "theory of everything" that signals the end? Is the age of great discoverers behind us? Is science today reduced to mere puzzle solving and adding detains to existing theories? Horgan extracts surprisingly candid answers to there and other delicate questions as he discusses God, Star Trek, superstrings, quarks, plectics, consciousness, Neural Darwinism, Marx's view of progress, Kuhn's view of revolutions, cellular automata, robots, and the Omega Point, with Fred Hoyle, Noam Chomsky, John Wheeler, Clifford Geertz, and dozens of other eminent scholars. The resulting narrative will both infuriate and delight as it mindless Horgan's smart, contrarian argument for "endism" with a witty, thoughtful, even profound overview of the entire scientific enterprise. Scientists have always set themselves apart from other scholars in the belief that they do not construct the truth, they discover it. Their work is not interpretation but simple revelation of what exists in the empirical universe. But science itself keeps imposing limits on its own power. Special relativity prohibits the transmission of matter or information as speeds faster than that of light; quantum mechanics dictates uncertainty; and chaos theory confirms the impossibility of complete prediction. Meanwhile, the very idea of scientific rationality is under fire from Neo-Luddites, animal-rights activists, religious fundamentalists, and New Agers alike. As Horgan makes clear, perhaps the greatest threat to science may come from losing its special place in the hierarchy of disciplines, being reduced to something more akin to literaty criticism as more and more theoreticians engage in the theory twiddling he calls "ironic science." Still, while Horgan offers his critique, grounded in the thinking of the world's leading researchers, he offers homage too. If science is ending, he maintains, it is only because it has done its work so well.

Author: Paul O'Hara
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1796004170
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
This book is an exploration of various themes common to the broad tradition of Western philosophy. What do we mean by a relation? Is a relation a transcendental object or something only operative in the world of concrete things? What is the difference between universal and particular? Is there clarity in the way we represent an object or is clarity only in the way a thing is composed? What is the difference between knowledge before the fact (a priori) and knowledge after the fact (a posteriori)? These are all questions that pertain to our understanding of who we are and of the world we live in. We also touch broader issues, such as the relation between space and time and art and nature, with particular emphasis on modern developments in physics and biology. The fixity of space and time is something that has come to be questioned as is the fixity and origin of the human species. These are dealt with in a way that is conformable to modern thinking yet which remains sensitive to broader historical concerns.

Author: Robert J. Howell
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0199654662
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
Robert J. Howell offers a new account of the relationship between conscious experience and the physical world, based on a neo-Cartesian notion of the physical and careful consideration of three anti-materialist arguments. His theory of subjective physicalism reconciles the data of consciousness with the advantages of a monistic, physical ontology.

Author: Robert S. Cohen
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400971788
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
These essays on the conceptual understanding of modern physics strike directly at some of the principal difficulties faced by contemporary philos ophers of physical science. Moreover, they reverberate to earlier and classical struggles with those difficulties. Each of these essays may be seen as both a commentary on our predecessors and an original analytic interpretation. They come from work of the past decade, most from meetings of the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science, and they demonstrate again how problematic the fundamentals of our understanding of nature still are. The themes will seem to be familiar but the variations are not only ingenious but also stimulating, in some ways counterpoint. And so once again we are confronted with issues of space and time, irreversibility and measurement, matter and process, hypothetical reality and verifiability, explanation and reduction, phenomenal base and sophisticated theory, unified science and the unity of nature, and the limits of conventionalism. We are grateful for the cooperation of our contributors, and in particular for the agreement of George Ellis and C. F. von Weizsiicker to allow us to use previously published papers.

Author: Aleksandar I. Zecevic
Publisher: University Readers
ISBN: 9781609274948
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
Although classical physics provides fairly simple explanations for a wide range of phenomena, it clearly fails to describe some of the subtler workings of nature. As a result, there is widespread agreement among scientists that the Newtonian paradigm is inadequate, and must be replaced by a more sophisticated view of reality. This book examines what such an outlook might entail, and explains why we need to reevaluate some of our most deeply ingrained beliefs about the world we live in. A distinguishing feature of this book is that it combines insights from chaos theory, metamathematics, quantum mechanics, and the theory of relativity, which are seldom (if ever) united under a single title. What binds these seemingly disparate disciplines together is the recognition that each of them reveals certain counterintuitive aspects of nature, and suggests that human knowledge is inherently limited. In that respect, this book represents a natural technical companion to Truth, Beauty, and the Limits of Knowledge: A Path from Science to Religion (University Readers, 2012), which examines the philosophical and theological implications of modern science. Dr. Aleksandar Zecevic is a Professor of Electrical Engineering at Santa Clara University, and Associate Dean for Graduate Studies. His research interests include graph theoretic decomposition algorithms, electric power systems, and the control of complex dynamic systems. Some of his most important results in these fields are summarized in his recent book: Control of Complex Systems: Structural Constraints and Uncertainty(Springer, 2010). Over the past 15 years, Dr. Zecevic has also done a considerable amount of work in the area of science and religion. His two latest books: Truth, Beauty, and the Limits of Knowledge: A Path from Science to Religion and The Unknowable and the Counterintuitive: The Surprising Insights of Modern Science are devoted to this topic."

Author: Charis Anastopoulos
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 9780691135120
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 444

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Book Description
'Particle or Wave' explains the origins and development of modern physical concepts about matter and the controversies surrounding them.

Author: Jenni G. Halpin
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319751484
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 134

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Book Description
This book analyzes recent physics plays, arguing that their enaction of concepts from the sciences they discuss alters the nature of the decisions made by the characters, changing the ethical judgements that might be cast on them. Recent physics plays regularly alter the shape of space-time itself, drawing together disparate moments, reversing the flow of time, creating apparent contradictions, and iterating scenes for multiple branches of counterfactual history. With these changes both causality and responsibility shift, variously. The roles of iconic scientists, such as Albert Einstein and Werner Heisenberg, are interrogated for their dramatic value, placing history and dramatic license in tension. Cold War strategies and the limits of espionage highlight the emphatically personal involvement of ordinary individuals. This study is vital reading for those interested in physics plays and the relationship between the sciences and the humanities.

Author: Elise Crull
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 940240970X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
Grete Hermann (1901-1984) was a pupil of mathematical physicist Emmy Noether, follower and co-worker of neo-Kantian philosopher Leonard Nelson, and an important intellectual figure in post-war German social democracy. She is best known for her work on the philosophy of modern physics in the 1930s, some of which emerged from intense discussions with Heisenberg and Weizsäcker in Leipzig. Hermann’s aim was to counter the threat to the Kantian notion of causality coming from quantum mechanics. She also discussed in depth the question of ‘hidden variables’ (including the first critique of von Neumann’s alleged impossibility proof) and provided an extensive analysis of Bohr’s notion of complementarity. This volume includes translations of Hermann’s two most important essays on this topic: one hitherto unpublished and one translated here into English for the first time. It also brings together recent scholarly contributions by historians and philosophers of science, physicists, and philosophers and educators following in Hermann’s steps. Hermann's work places her in the first rank among philosophers who wrote about modern physics in the first half of the last century. Those interested in the many fields to which she contributed will find here a comprehensive discussion of her philosophy of physics that places it in the context of her wider work.