I love this book because it tells the story of the discovery of one of the greatest scientific theories: quantum physics – from a human point of view. There are diagrams but no equations. Becker narrates his story in a chronological order, involving the main protagonists behind the development of the physics of the subatomic world. But Becker does not just write as a historian. He is a physicist himself who is unhappy with the most popular interpretation of quantum mechanics: the Copenhagen interpretation. That is why the book bears the title: What is Real? For the trouble with quantum mechanics has always been, from the very start, what the abstruse mathematics tells us about the real world of atoms and their strange behaviour.
Every physicist agrees quantum mechanics is among humanity's finest scientific achievements. But ask what it means, and the result will be a brawl. For a century, most physicists have followed Niels Bohr's Copenhagen interpretation and dismissed questions about the reality underlying quantum physics as meaningless. A mishmash of solipsism and poor reasoning, Copenhagen endured, as Bohr's students vigorously protected his legacy, and the physics community favoured practical experiments over philosophical arguments. As a result, questioning the status quo long meant professional ruin. And yet, from the 1920s to today, physicists like John Bell, David Bohm, and Hugh Everett persisted in…
Everybody knows that the French Revolution started with the storming of the Bastille (1789) and went through a period of terror (1793-94). This book is worth reading because Soboul makes it clear that the French Revolution was a complicated affair, with many swings of the political pendulum. He explains why the Ancien Régime failed and why the terror period happened. He looks at the tumultuous events from the economic, political and social angle. The motivations of each class – the nobility, the clergy, the bourgeosie and the sans-culottes – are meticulously recounted, supported by empirical data.The eventful and bloody period ended in the military dictatorship of Napoleon Bonaparte. But Soboul makes clear that despite the many turns and bloody battles the French Revolution ended the injustices of the Ancien Régime and launched the modern era of liberté, égalité and fraternité.
: I was enthralled by this fascinating story of the Prussian explorer and naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, born in 1769. Von Humboldt was one of the most famous scientists of his time. Napolean, however, disliked him. As he is largely forgotten today, Wulf describes him as ‘the lost hero of science’. Von Humboldt travelled across North and South America and Russia. Many natural phenomena are named after him, from mountain peaks to rivers and ocean currents. His major work Kosmos (1845-1862) contains his guiding philosophical idea: the interconnectedness of nature. It inspired Charles Darwin. The interconnectedness of all things meant, for instance, that the koala bear and the eucalyptus tree depend on each other as much as the bird and the bush. With today’s environmental crisis this idea of interrelatedness has gained renewed importance.
WINNER OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY SCIENCE BOOK PRIZE 2016
'A thrilling adventure story' Bill Bryson
'Dazzling' Literary Review
'Brilliant' Sunday Express
'Extraordinary and gripping' New Scientist
'A superb biography' The Economist
'An exhilarating armchair voyage' GILES MILTON, Mail on Sunday
Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) is the great lost scientist - more things are named after him than anyone else. There are towns, rivers, mountain ranges, the ocean current that runs along the South American coast, there's a penguin, a giant squid - even the Mare Humboldtianum on the moon.
How do major scientific discoveries reshape our physical worldview? THE SCIENTIST AS PHILOSOPHER explores the interconnection between physics and philosophy. The book places the scientist-philosophers in the limelight as we learn how their great scientific discoveries forced them to reconsider the time-honoured notion with which science had described the natural world. The book explains how our understanding of science and nature has undergone fundamental conceptual changes as a result of the discoveries of electromagnetism, thermodynamics and atomic structure. Even more dramatically, the special theory of relativity and quantum mechanics questioned traditional assumptions about causality and the nature of time. The book elucidates how these two theories affected these traditional notions. The entanglement between science and philosophy is an ongoing process, which will keep them forever entwined.
