Book ID: CBB452869026

Quantum Legacies: Dispatches from an Uncertain World (2020)

unapi

The ideas at the root of quantum theory remain stubbornly, famously bizarre: a solid world reduced to puffs of probability; particles that tunnel through walls; cats suspended in zombielike states, neither alive nor dead; and twinned particles that share entangled fates. For more than a century, physicists have grappled with these conceptual uncertainties while enmeshed in the larger uncertainties of the social and political worlds around them, a time pocked by the rise of fascism, cataclysmic world wars, and a new nuclear age. In Quantum Legacies, David Kaiser introduces readers to iconic episodes in physicists’ still-unfolding quest to understand space, time, and matter at their most fundamental. In a series of vibrant essays, Kaiser takes us inside moments of discovery and debate among the great minds of the era—Albert Einstein, Erwin Schrödinger, Stephen Hawking, and many more who have indelibly shaped our understanding of nature—as they have tried to make sense of a messy world. Ranging across space and time, the episodes span the heady 1920s, the dark days of the 1930s, the turbulence of the Cold War, and the peculiar political realities that followed. In those eras as in our own, researchers’ ambition has often been to transcend the vagaries of here and now, to contribute lasting insights into how the world works that might reach beyond a given researcher’s limited view. In Quantum Legacies, Kaiser unveils the difficult and unsteady work required to forge some shared understanding between individuals and across generations, and in doing so, he illuminates the deep ties between scientific exploration and the human condition.

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Multimedia Object Kaiser, David Isaac; Robinson, Michael (2020-07-22) Quantum Legacies. unapi

Multimedia Object Matthew Jordan; David Kaiser (2020) David Kaiser, “Quantum Legacies: Dispatches from an Uncertain World” (U Chicago Press, 2020). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB452869026/

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Authors & Contributors
Rosa, Rodolfo
Mehra, Jagdish
Hanle, Paul A.
Burwell, Jennifer
Greco, Pietro
Stuewer, Roger H.
Concepts
Quantum mechanics
Physics
Theoretical physics
Philosophy of science
Philosophy
Quantum theory
Time Periods
20th century
20th century, early
21st century
Places
Paris (France)
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