Physics: A Short History from Quintessence to Quarks

By John L. Heilbron and J.L. Heilbron

Book Overview

How does the physics we know today - a highly professionalised enterprise, inextricably linked to government and industry - link back to its origins as a liberal art in Ancient Greece? What is the path that leads from the old philosophy of nature and its concern with humankind's place in the universe to modern massive international projects that hunt down fundamental particles and industrial laboratories that manufacture marvels?

J. L. Heilbron's fascinating history of physics introduces us to Islamic astronomers and mathematicians, calculating the size of the earth whilst their caliphs conquered much of it; to medieval scholar-theologians investigating light; to Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton, measuring, and trying to explain, the universe. We visit the 'House of Wisdom' in 9th-century Baghdad; Europe's first universities; the courts of the Renaissance; the Scientific Revolution and the academies of the 18th century; the increasingly specialised world of 20th and 21st century science.

Highlighting the shifting relationship between physics, philosophy, mathematics, and technology -- and the implications for humankind's self-understanding -- Heilbron explores the changing place and purpose of physics in the cultures and societies that have nurtured it over the centuries.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0198746857
• ISBN13: 9780198746850
• Release Date: January 2016
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.94 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.2" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

How much can you put in one book before it becomes too heavy?

John Heilbronn knows his stuff and writes well. However, this book is a quickie on Physics and related disciplines from history to today, January 2016. It is neat that Heilbronn mentions the Superconducting Super Collider. I sold a lot of copper wire to the project and later a dozen or so small computers. I was looking forward to getting a position there. Too bad the governor of Arkansas dissed it, or we would have been making most of the physics discovery; it would also double as a low-frequency transmitter worldwide. John Heilbronn shows in chapter 1 that we were doing a pretty good job of figuring out everything when the Christians threw in a monkey wrench. Chapter 2 shows that despite their backward Christians, the Islamic world saved our bacon by translating Greek to Arabic, keeping physics alive, and expanding on it. In Chapter 3, we finally make it back to the West; we get Galileo, Kepler, and Frances Bacon. Still, there is some Christian flak. At this point in chapter three, John Heilbronn mentions Galileo’s book “Discourses on Two New Sciences” in 1638 as a dissertation on shipbuilding. Stephen Hawking thought it was about Copernicus; in reality, it is just a bunch of geometry and physics of motion presented in the form of a dialogue. By chapter 4, the titles in the book suffice for this review: Revolution or integration: …S-e-x-t-u-s Empiricus (around 200 CE) …Newton’s scheme …Johannes Kepler … Tycho's measurements of the 1577 comet Quite a few others are all packed into paragraphs. The invention of physics: …Isaac Newton and many of his contemporaries. … Benjamin Franklin …The Leyden jar and electricity …Charles Augustin Coulomb and his two electrified pith balls …Joseph Priestley …Alessandro Volta Chapter 5 takes us into the nineteenth century. The names and inventions come fast and furious, and once again are super packed, so you will need to use this book as a starting point for further reading. Chapter 6 From the Old World to the New. Just as the title implies, we wiz through a couple of world wars and their effect on our study of physics. Then we are treated to a barrage of various technical names for all kinds of physics. Unfortunately, the book is not large enough to expand on any of the physics principles that we are slightly exposed to. We are treated as the reason that the US now and in the foreseeable future dominates in the research of physics because we contribute more of our GDP in that direction. Chapter 7 The Quintessential Gods place Physics place Niels Bohr David Gross (Santa Barbara) *** even the CERN Large Hadron Collider gets an upgrade We get a few monochrome sketches and photos when needed. There are no footnotes or timelines. There are references and a list of further reading.