Doing Physics: How Physicists Take Hold of the World - Brossura

Krieger, Martin H.

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0253006074 ISBN 13: 9780253006073

Casa editrice: Indiana Univ Pr, 2012

Riassunto

Doing Physics makes concepts of physics easier to grasp by relating them to everyday knowledge. Addressing some of the models and metaphors that physicists use to explain the physical world, Martin H. Krieger describes the conceptual world of physics by means of analogies to economics, anthropology, theater, carpentry, mechanisms such as clockworks, and machine tool design. The interaction of elementary particles or chemical species, for example, can be related to the theory of kinship—who can marry whom is like what can interact with what. Likewise, the description of physical situations in terms of interdependent particles and fields is analogous to the design of a factory with its division of labor among specialists. For the new edition, Krieger has revised the text and added a chapter on the role of mathematics and formal models in physics. Doing Physics will be of special interest to economists, political theorists, anthropologists, and sociologists as well as philosophers of science.

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Recensione:

"An excellent [and innovative] book." --Isis

"This unusual book introduces 'the moves, the rituals, the incantations' physicists invoke as they go about conceptualizing Nature. The lucid-but-loaded writing makes quite complex ideas accessible to the mathless reader... The rewards are a better understanding of how physics is done." --Whole Earth Millennial Catalog

"This is an important and provocative book, timely and full of insight. Fail to read it, and you may miss out on the physics of the future." --John Gribbin, New Scientist

L'autore:

Martin H. Krieger, who was trained as a physicist at Columbia University, has been a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and at the National Humanities Center. He is author of Marginalism and Discontinuity: Tools for the Crafts of Knowledge and Decision (1989), Constitutions of Matter: Mathematically Modeling the Most Everyday of Physical Phenomena (1996), and Doing Mathematics: Convention, Subject, Calculation, Analogy (2003). He is on the faculty of the University of Southern California, and has taught at Berkeley, Minnesota, MIT, and Michigan.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Indiana Univ Pr
• Data di pubblicazione: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0253006074
• ISBN 13: 9780253006073
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero edizione: 2
• Numero di pagine: 218