Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics 1st Edition

by Peter Louis Galison (Author)

3 customer reviews

ISBN-13: 978-0226279176

ISBN-10: 0226279170

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"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.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

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.

Paperback: 982 pages
Publisher: University of Chicago Press; 1 edition (October 1, 1997)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0226279170
ISBN-13: 978-0226279176
Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.7 inches
Shipping Weight: 2.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 3 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,462,257 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #7561 in History & Philosophy of Science
- #3291 in Physics (Books)
- #218 in Particle Physics

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georgi tushev

Five Stars

December 28, 2014

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James M. Bunting

Informative and Illuminating

January 2, 2002

Format: Paperback

Peter Galison presents an in-depth look at Experimental Physics in the 20th century, both to reveal its history and present an alternative view of scientific change in recent history. Starting with Wilson's first cloud chamber and progressing through WWII R&D up to and including the Superconducting SuperCollider Galison reveals major changes and redefinitions of what it means to be a practitioner of Experimental Physics. His approach applies a sociological perspective where theorists, experimentalists and instrumentalists share a dialog referred to by Galison as a "trading zone" where the previously assumed communication structures within and between Scientific disciplines are viewed as non-rigid, flexible and mutable. Along the way Galison provides fascinating examples of events and discoveries that illuminate the little known world of research and experiment in recent history. Among these examples are the fire at the Cambridge Electron Accelerator which brought about much greater regulatory involvement of the AEC. Also, the necessary use of MonteCarlo methods in the development of the H-Bomb where as Galison states "A hundred million degrees kelvin put the laboratory out of the picture..." ultimately leading to present day computer technology. For anyone within or outside of physics proper this book is truly an eye-opener to that almost invisible world of 20th century Experimental Physics.

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Paul Lucian

The Soul Of A New Machine Part II: Ascension Into The Clouds

June 15, 2006

Format: Paperback

It's 2006, have you even picked up a science book lately? Why not? Nova and Discover enough? Well maybe Peter Galison can change all that. Think of him as the ultimate insider in a world that moves too fast for journalism to keep up with its leaks, spills and brilliant mistakes. Galison doesn't condescend to readers nor does he ream them with macho scibits; he's an academic who has a knack for talking out loud in front of any size audience, consisting of anybody willing to follow his investigations into the subcultures of science, with theorists on one phenomenological side and engineers on the other. Image & Logic is already considered a masterpiece by Galison's peers but he's yet to get the popular push that Carl Sagen and Stephen J. Gould got, and that's...ok. Just as Tracy Kidder managed to wrest computer technology from the clutches of lab-elitists and their cocktail napkin philistine pimps (CNPP) with his Soul of A New Machine, Galison will eventually vaporize the CNPP and the rest of us can breath easier. So go on, wean yourself off of the philistine's big hairy factoids and get some real, science under your belt.

8 people found this helpful

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Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics 1st Edition