The Physicist's Way
A Philosophical Guide to the Practice of Physics
Will be published approx. on 20. October 2026
Book
Hardback
288 pages
978-0-691-28983-0 (ISBN)
Description
A Nobel Prize-winning physicist illuminates how physicists think about and do physics
What principles guide physicists' ways of thinking and the practice and culture of the discipline? In The Physicist's Way, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist P.J.E. Peebles argues that definite assumptions underpin the working physicist's approach, the elements of which are learned organically by incoming generations of students and shared across the field. Peebles outlines these basic principles, elucidating how physicists apply their approach to a broad range of topics, from quantum physics to the physics of the expanding universe.
After discussing physicists' demanding tests of the fundamental theories of quantum physics and relativistic cosmology and how physicists think about the puzzling lack of consistency between the two, Peebles considers the sociology of the field and where physics might be headed. Engaging throughout with ideas developed by scientists, philosophers, and historians, he elucidates the unique place physics holds in the natural sciences for the ability to discover theories that make definite predictions that agree with what can be observed.
The Physicist's Way offers an enlightening perspective on how physicists think about and approach the practice of physics.
What principles guide physicists' ways of thinking and the practice and culture of the discipline? In The Physicist's Way, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist P.J.E. Peebles argues that definite assumptions underpin the working physicist's approach, the elements of which are learned organically by incoming generations of students and shared across the field. Peebles outlines these basic principles, elucidating how physicists apply their approach to a broad range of topics, from quantum physics to the physics of the expanding universe.
After discussing physicists' demanding tests of the fundamental theories of quantum physics and relativistic cosmology and how physicists think about the puzzling lack of consistency between the two, Peebles considers the sociology of the field and where physics might be headed. Engaging throughout with ideas developed by scientists, philosophers, and historians, he elucidates the unique place physics holds in the natural sciences for the ability to discover theories that make definite predictions that agree with what can be observed.
The Physicist's Way offers an enlightening perspective on how physicists think about and approach the practice of physics.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New Jersey
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Trade binding
Illustrations
9 tables.
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 140 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-691-28983-0 (9780691289830)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
P.J.E. Peebles is a Nobel Prize laureate in physics and the Albert Einstein Professor of Science Emeritus at Princeton University. He is the author of The Whole Truth: A Cosmologist's Reflections on the Search for Objective Reality, Cosmology's Century: An Inside History of Our Modern Understanding of the Universe, Physical Cosmology, The Large-Scale Structure of the Universe, Quantum Mechanics, and Principles of Physical Cosmology (all Princeton).