Image and Logic : A Material Culture of Microphysics

Peter Galison

ISBN 10: 0226279170 / ISBN 13: 9780226279176

Edité par University Of Chicago Press Okt 1997, 1997

A propos de cet article

Neuware - List of Figures Preface 1: Introduction: Image and Logic 2: Cloud Chambers: The Peculiar Genius of British Physics 3: Nuclear Emulsions: The Anxiety of the Experimenter 4: Laboratory War: Radar Philosophy and the Los Alamos Man 5: Bubble Chambers: Factories of Physics 6: The Electronic Image: Iconoclasm and the New Icons 7: Time Projection Chambers: An Image Falling through Space 8: Monte Carlo Simulations: Artificial Reality 9: The Trading Zone: Coordinating Action and Belief Abbreviations for Archival Sources Bibliography Index.

N° de réf. du vendeur 9780226279176

Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: Image and Logic : A Material Culture of Microphysics
• Éditeur: University Of Chicago Press Okt 1997
• Date de parution: 1997
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN à 10 chiffres: 0226279170
• ISBN à 13 chiffres: 9780226279176
• Reliure: Taschenbuch
• État de l'article: Neu
• Dimensions: 230 L x 151 H x 44 P (en millimètres) 230 millimètres de largeur par 151 millimètres de hauteur par 44 millimètres de profondeur
• Poids: 1270 grammes

A propos de ce titre

Synopsis

"I want to get at the blown glass of the early cloud chambers and the oozing noodles of wet nuclear emulsion; to the resounding crack of a high-voltage spark arcing across a high-tension chamber and leaving the lab stinking of ozone; to the silent, darkened room, with row after row of scanners sliding trackballs across projected bubble-chamber images. Pictures and pulses--I want to know where they came from, how pictures and counts got to be the bottom-line data of physics." (from the preface)

Image and Logic is the most detailed engagement to date with the impact of modern technology on what it means to "do" physics and to be a physicist. At the beginning of this century, physics was usually done by a lone researcher who put together experimental apparatus on a benchtop. Now experiments frequently are larger than a city block, and experimental physicists live very different lives: programming computers, working with industry, coordinating vast teams of scientists and engineers, and playing politics.

Peter L. Galison probes the material culture of experimental microphysics to reveal how the ever-increasing scale and complexity of apparatus have distanced physicists from the very science that drew them into experimenting, and have fragmented microphysics into different technical traditions much as apparatus have fragmented atoms to get at the fundamental building blocks of matter. At the same time, the necessity for teamwork in operating multimillion-dollar machines has created dynamic "trading zones," where instrument makers, theorists, and experimentalists meet, share knowledge, and coordinate the extraordinarily diverse pieces of the culture of modern microphysics: work, machines, evidence, and argument.

À propos de l?auteur

Peter Galison is Mallinckrodt Professor of the History of Science and of Physics at Harvard University. He is author of How Experiments End, published by the University of Chicago Press, and coeditor of The Disunity of Science: Contexts, Boundaries, and Power.