Drawing Theories Apart: The Dispersion of Feynman Diagrams in Postwar Physics [Paperback]

David Kaiser (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 15, 2005 | ISBN-10: 0226422674 | ISBN-13: 978-0226422671 | Edition: 1

Winner of the 2007 Pfizer Prize from the History of Science Society.

 

Feynman diagrams have revolutionized nearly every aspect of theoretical physics since the middle of the twentieth century. Introduced by the American physicist Richard Feynman (1918-88) soon after World War II as a means of simplifying lengthy calculations in quantum electrodynamics, they soon gained adherents in many branches of the discipline. Yet as new physicists adopted the tiny line drawings, they also adapted the diagrams and introduced their own interpretations. Drawing Theories Apart traces how generations of young theorists learned to frame their research in terms of the diagrams—and how both the diagrams and their users were molded in the process.

Drawing on rich archival materials, interviews, and more than five hundred scientific articles from the period, Drawing Theories Apart uses the Feynman diagrams as a means to explore the development of American postwar physics. By focusing on the ways young physicists learned new calculational skills, David Kaiser frames his story around the crafting and stabilizing of the basic tools in the physicist's kit—thus offering the first book to follow the diagrams once they left Feynman's hands and entered the physics vernacular.

(20061101)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A colorful and readable account of the earliest applications of the diagrammatic technique."—Eugen Merzbacher, Physics Today

(Eugen Merzbacher Physics Today )

"This is a rich and original contribution to the expanding historical scholarship on the development of scientific tools and practices. Kaiser is one of the few historians to deal with the conceptual equipment of science as a kind of malleable paper tool, showing how Feynman diagrams were refracted through local environments and ultimately transformed. In all, a dazzling piece of work."-Daniel J. Kevles, Yale University

(Daniel J. Kevles, Yale University )

“Only a few people have the talent to write the history of theoretical physics. Only one or two can conceptualize and explain the elaboration of theory as a practical activity, which, like fine art, has its own competing traditions and conventions of representation.  David Kaiser accomplishes all this and backs it up with a level of detailed scholarship that makes it totally convincing.”—Harry Collins, Cardiff University

(Harry Collins, Cardiff University )

“This book is a double delight. It is the best example so far of a new way of doing the history of science, not as an account of evolving theories, experiments, and instruments, but of diagrams. It is a story of how a generation of physicists came to think for themselves and to talk to others in a new way. It takes you inside their minds and their seminars. It is also a wonderful way to learn how Feynman diagrams work and what they mean—in effect, a super do-it-yourself manual.”—Ian Hacking, Collège de France, Paris (Ian Hacking, College de France )

"This is surely the definitive study of one of the great ubiquitous tools of modern quantum field theory."—A. I. Solomon, Contemporary Physics

(A. I. Solomon Contemporary Physics )

“Intellectual tools can have profound impacts. Feynman diagrams have greatly improved how theoretical physicists think and, consequently, our understanding of nature. Drawing Theories Apart provides an informative description of how their influence came about.”—Gordon Kane, Science

 

(Gordon Kane Science )

"This is a fascinating book., if you are interested in the history, sociology and people of physics. It should be in every physics library."—Bruce H.J. McKellar, Australian Physics

(Bruce H.J. McKellar Australian Physics )

"Kaiser is prodigiously talented in telling the adventure of modern theoretical physics: the richness of the book may impress even the most demanding historians and physicists. Physicists will probably be surprised to learn of so many varieties of Feynman diagrams. Historians will be delighted with the originality of the approach. . . . Everybody will be enchanted by the style of the book: even when (very) difficult physics is presented, it is never boring; it is always luminous and exciting."—Anouk Barberousse, International Studies in the Philsophy of Science

(Anouk Barberousse International Studies in the Philsophy of Science )

2006 book prize

(Forum for the History of Science in America )

"A colorful and readable account of the earliest applications of the diagrammatic technique. . . . The book comes equipped with a formidable ancillary apparatus of footnotes and appendices and a massive bibliography that alone is worth the price."

(Eugen Merzbacher Physics )

"A rich, original and most recommendable contribution to the history of modern science. It skilfully integrates social history with conceptual history, a technical mastery of Feynman diagrams with a broad and novel perspective of the historicity of the diagrams. . . . Drawing Theories Apart will surely be studied by historians, sociologists and philosophers of physics. . . . It has much to offer also to readers with no background in physics."—British Journal of the History of Science

(British Journal of the History of Science )

"A stimulating and readable book that is also accessible to a wider audience. . . . The book is a valuable contribution to the history and philosophy of physics."

(Adrian Wuethrich Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics )

"Kaiserer''s masterly written book provides a readable account of the role of Feynman''s intuitive tools for today''s physics."

(Gert Roepstorff Zentralblatt Math )

About the Author

David Kaiser is associate professor in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society and lecturer in the Department of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Product Details

• Paperback: 376 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (June 15, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226422674
• ISBN-13: 978-0226422671
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #581,869 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

David Kaiser is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he teaches in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society and the Department of Physics. A Fellow of the American Physical Society, he received the History of Science Society's Pfizer Award for his book 'Drawing Theories Apart,' which traces how Richard Feynman's idiosyncratic approach to quantum theory entered the mainstream. He and his family live near Boston.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting for historians, valuable for physicists, July 31, 2006

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A. J. Sutter (Tokyo, Japan) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Drawing Theories Apart: The Dispersion of Feynman Diagrams in Postwar Physics (Paperback)

This is a very engaging book on at least two different levels: as a book about history, and as a book about physics.

The book is an early adopter of a couple of new and intriguing techniques in history of science. Instead of trying to identify theories or paradigms, it focuses on physicists' "paper tools" --the techniques they used for calculations. Also, it emphasizes the importance of pedagogy -- a subject's transmission through textbooks, clusters of professors/postdocs/grad students and, importantly in this case, informal contact.

Feynman introduced his diagrams at a small, private conference in spring 1948. He didn't publish about them until September 1949; but by then they were already widely used in studying quantum electrodynamics, albeit not well-understood. Kaiser traces the roles of Freeman Dyson and a cadre of postdocs from Princeton's IAS in spreading the diagrams on both sides of the Atlantic. As each researcher pieced together his (or occasionally her) own understanding of the diagrams, he transmitted it -- together with many idiosyncrasies -- to his students. A neat figure in the book compares the styles of diagram used by professors and students at major universities. Students tended to follow their teachers, but no two institutions had the same style. (Kaiser also traces the spread of the diagrams in Japan and Russia, two physics communities that were largely isolated from Western researchers.)

The result was a Balkanization of styles and interpretations of the diagrams. This had already begun with Dyson's first articles in February 1949. Feynman had viewed the diagrams as intuitively depicting the behavior of particles in spacetime. Kaiser connects the diagrams' enduring appeal to their similarity to particle tracks in bubble-chamber photos, which makes a viewer feel that the diagrams are a realistic picture of what's going on. Dyson, on the other hand, regarded them as a geometric algorithm for keeping track of terms in a perturbative expansion in QED; he was also the first to promote viewing them in an abstract, topological way.

These centrifugal tendencies became elaborated and diversified in the 1950s and 1960s. All sorts of new diagrams sprung up, with different kinds of lines, arrows, geometries and "blobs" -- but eventually all were called "Feynman diagrams". The uses of the diagrams also diverged, from being a tool of quantum field theory to being a tool for its (attempted) overthrow. Among many other fascinating stories, Kaiser describes the UC Berkeley "particle democracy" movement, which used geometrical permutations of the diagrams to make a case that the distinction between "elementary" and "composite" particles is false. (By similar means, the school of Lev Landau came to regard diagrams as more fundamental than field theory.)

Kaiser does a great job of providing the historical context of what problems each group was trying to address, including adapting the diagrams to studying QED in condensed matter as well as other QFTs, such as the strong interaction. Along the way, you'll learn a little about Regge theory, pomerons, the Mandelstam representation, the analytical S-matrix, and other approaches to QFT that still surface today in corners of the arXiv. You won't find these developments described in other histories of the period, such as Schweber's "QED" or Pais's ultra-terse "Inward Bound". Kaiser's book is indispensible for understanding diagrams in the physics literature from the 1950s and 1960s and perhaps later. (And since it's much shorter than Schweber and less oracular than Schwinger, it's a good introduction to the second half of the Dover collection of QED papers, which Schwinger edited and introduced.)

Readers more interested in QFT than in history might be put off by Kaiser's at times dry style, and especially by the critical theory-tinged first chapter (influenced by the science studies ramblings of Bruno Latour et al.) But don't be put off. While much of the history Kaiser describes has been forgotten, it survives in the eclectic style of "Feynman diagrams" you'll find in many textbooks today -- e.g., Itzykson & Zuber, Ryder, Mattuck, and A. Zee's recent "Nutshell", which mixes diagrammatic styles with an especially breezy abandon. In all of these, turn a few pages past the dutiful description of the 1949 Feynman-Dyson rules and you'll start seeing diagrams about QCD, or diagrams with blobs or double-arrows or other innovations, most of which won't be explained systematically. Kaiser's book will help you to decipher some of these diagrammatic puzzles. Even better, it may make you sensitive to some of the uses, interpretations, and ambiguities of diagrams that you might never have considered otherwise.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating, deep, yet still accessible, June 29, 2010

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Wowbagger - See all my reviews

This review is from: Drawing Theories Apart: The Dispersion of Feynman Diagrams in Postwar Physics (Paperback)

This is one of the best history of physics books I've read. Kaiser has a very engaging style of writing and explains technical physical concepts well. Those talents, together with the quirky personalities involved, and the many often humorous quotes from physicists scattered throughout, mean that even the lay reader would be able to enjoy this book. It's far more accessible than, for example, Andrew Pickering's Constructing Quarks. It's also far more entertaining and less loaded with jargon.

Even more impressively, the accessible style doesn't detract from the quality of research presented. With his detailed accounts of the myriad, often mutually contradictory applications of field theory and Feynman diagrams, Kaiser makes a strong case against theory-centric philosophy of science and for a more Cartwrightian stance. He also does an excellent job of describing contrasting strands of methodologies, such as Dyson's use of Feynman diagrams primarily as a bookkeeping device in mathematically rigorous field theory versus Feynman's own much more relaxed and sloppy use of the diagrams. He has a convincing presentation of the sociology involved in the spread of Feynman diagrams -- unlike many sociology of science works that are steeped in social constructionist jargon, this was all done in extremely accessible language and kept me turning the pages -- the prose was not dry at all.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating Book, October 28, 2011

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M. MISKULIN (USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Drawing Theories Apart: The Dispersion of Feynman Diagrams in Postwar Physics (Paperback)

Historical books are generally far down my list of books to read but this was a rare gem. Granted, I have a strong interest in nuclear/hep physics which certainly helps but I could see anyone with some basic grounding in math/science enjoying this book. It really is fascinating to look at the myriad ways in which the diagrams not only spread, but evolved and how they have become ubiquitous. The bibliography is quite extensive and at some point I will try to find some of the source material to look at too. Definitely a geek page turner.