Against Transcendence
Essays on the Physical Significance of Modern Culture
Paul Forman(Author)
Cambridge University Press
Published on 1. June 2020
Book
Hardback
400 pages
978-0-521-43020-3 (ISBN)
Description
Against Transcendence is the first gathering of Paul Forman's influential essays in the history of modern physics. Written over the last twenty years, and offered here with newly written introductions, Paul Forman's essays are exemplary in connecting the content with the context of modern physics. They explore the scientific life in Germany following World War I and America following World War II, underscoring the bearing of wider cultural factors upon the organisation, direction, interpretation, and success of physical research. The volume includes two seminal essays in the history of physics: Weimar Culture, Causality, and Quantum Theory, 1918-1927: Adaptation by German Physicists and Mathematicians to a Hostile Intellectual Environment, and Beyond Quantum Electronics: National Security as Basis for Physical Research in the United States, 1945-1960. Elegantly written and meticulously researched, the essays in Against Transcendence paint a history of modern physics that historians and physicists alike will find fascinating.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
2 line diagrams
Dimensions
Height: 228 mm
Width: 152 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-521-43020-3 (9780521430203)
Copyright in bibliographic data is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or its licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Content
Foreword by Freeman J. Dyson; Part I. After The First World War; 1. The NFV in Nauheim, 1920: an introduction to scientific life in the Weimar Republic (1986); 2. Scientific internationalism and the Weimar physicists (1973); 3. Financial support and political alignment of the physicists in Weimar Germay (1974); 4. Weimar culture, causality, and quantum theory (1971); 5. Reception of an acausal quantum mechanics in Germany and Britain (1979); 6. How cultural values prescribed the character and lessons ascribed to the quantum mechanics (1984); Part II. After The Second World War; 7. Social niche and self-image of the American physicist (1989); 8. Behind quantum electronics: national security as basis for physical research in the United States, 1945-60 (1987); 9. Making the maser, 1945-57 (forthcoming); Part III. Afterword: independence, not transcendence, for the historian of science; Index.