| Author |
Simonyi, Károly.
|
| Title |
A cultural history of physics / Károly Simonyi ; translated by David Kramer. |
| OCLC |
606051425 |
| ISBN |
9781568813295 (alk. paper) |
|
1568813295 |
| Publisher |
Boca Raton, FL : CRC Press, [2012] |
|
©2012 |
| Description |
xiv, 622 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 29 cm |
| LC Subject heading/s |
Physics -- History.
|
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. |
| Contents |
The History of Physics and its Relevance to our Lives Today -- Assessment and division into epochs -- Elements of the philosophy of science -- The dynamism of history. -- The Classical Heritage -- What the Greeks inherited -- The harmonious, beautiful order -- Matter and motion: the Aristotelian synthesis -- The greatest achievements of the ancient sciences -- The twilight of Hellenism -- The Stewards of the Heritage -- The thousand-year balance sheet -- The salvage of ancient knowledge -- The Indian and Arab worlds -- The West awakens -- Medieval natural philosophy -- The Renaissance and physics -- Demolition and the Construction of a New Foundation -- The world in 1600 -- Numerology and reality -- Galileo and those who stood in his shadow -- The new philosophy: doubt becomes method -- Light, vacuum, and matter through the middle of the seventeenth century -- After Descartes and before Newton: Huygens -- Newton and the Principia: The Newtonian worldview. -- The Completion of Classical Physics. Starting capital for the eighteenth century -- Worthy successors: d'Alembert, Euler, and Lagrange -- The century of light -- From effluvium to the electromagnetic field -- Heat and energy -- The structure of matter and electricity: the classical atom -- The Physics of the Twentieth Century -- "Clouds on the horizon of nineteenth-century physics" -- The theory of relativity -- Quantum theory -- Nuclear structure, nuclear energy -- Law and symmetry -- Mankind and the universe -- Summary and preview -- Looking ahead in physics / Edward Witten. |
| Summary |
While the physical sciences are a continuously evolving source of technology and of understanding about our world, they have become so specialized and rely on so much prerequisite knowledge that for many people today the divide between the sciences and the humanities seems even greater than it was when C. P. Snow delivered his famous 1959 lecture, "The Two Cultures." In this work, the author, a Hungarian scientist and educator succeeds in bridging this chasm by describing the experimental methods and theoretical interpretations that created scientific knowledge, from ancient times to the present day, within the cultural environment in which it was formed. It explores the interplay of science and the humanities to convey the wonder and excitement of scientific development throughout the ages. This book contains excerpts from original resources, explanations, and insight, revealing the historical progress of science and inviting readers into a dialogue with the great scientific minds that shaped our current understanding of physics. |
| General note |
"An A K Peters book." |
|
Translated from the German and Hungarian. |
|
