From Clockwork to Crapshoot: A History of PhysicsScience is about 6000 years old while physics emerged as a distinct branch some 2500 years ago. As scientists discovered virtually countless facts about the world during this great span of time, the manner in which they explained the underlying structure of that world underwent a philosophical evolution. From Clockwork to Crapshoot provides the perspective needed to understand contemporary developments in physics in relation to philosophical traditions as far back as ancient Greece. |
From inside the book
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... contributions of every one of the individuals involved in this enterprise, important as some of them may have been, nor does it trace the origin of every new concept to its ultimate source. More modest in scope at the historical micro ...
... contributions of every one of the individuals involved in this enterprise , important as some of them may have been , nor does it trace the origin of every new concept to its ultimate source . More modest in scope at the historical ...
... contribution of the Phoenician civilization , without which the subsequent development of Greek culture and all of West- ern science surely would have been impossible , was the invention of the alphabet . Even the Hindus learned the art ...
... contributions of the Confu- cians to science were almost entirely negative . Chinese civilization had to wait another three centuries for the Taoists , enemies of the Confucians , to equal the Ionian insights into nature . Opposing the ...
... contributed extensively — largely by speculation — to arith- metic . For example , he appears to have been the first to make a dis- tinction between even and odd numbers . This distinction seems trivial to us now because in our number ...
Contents
1 | |
4 | |
11 | |
Science in the Middle Ages | 41 |
The First Revolution | 67 |
Newtons Legacy | 100 |
New Physics | 121 |
Relativity | 154 |
The Quantum Revolution | 210 |
Fields Nuclei and Stars | 248 |
The Properties of Matter | 279 |
The Constituents of the Universe | 290 |
Epilogue | 308 |
Notes | 313 |
Sources and Further Reading | 316 |
Index | 322 |