Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics

Peter Galison

ISBN 10: 0226279170 / ISBN 13: 9780226279176

Published by University Of Chicago Press, 1997

About this Item

1997. 1st Edition. Paperback. Engages with the impact of modern technology on experimental physicists. This study reveals how the increasing scale and complexity of apparatus has distanced physicists from the very science which drew them into experimenting, and has fragmented microphysics into different technical traditions. Num Pages: 977 pages, 8 halftones, 113 line drawings. BIC Classification: PDN; PDR; PH. Category: (P) Professional & Vocational; (UP) Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly; (UU) Undergraduate. Dimension: 224 x 150 x 47. Weight in Grams: 1384. Material Culture of Microphysics. 977 pages, 8 halftones, 113 line drawings. Engages with the impact of modern technology on experimental physicists. This study reveals how the increasing scale and complexity of apparatus has distanced physicists from the very science which drew them into experimenting, and has fragmented microphysics into different technical traditions. Cateogry: (P) Professional & Vocational; (UP) Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly; (UU) Undergraduate. BIC Classification: PDN; PDR; PH. Dimension: 224 x 150 x 47. Weight: 1320. . . . . . Books ship from the US and Ireland.

Seller Inventory # V9780226279176

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
• Publication Date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0226279170
• ISBN 13: 9780226279176
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

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.

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.