I'm about 20% through (reading about the Solvay conference) and very much enjoying it. While I've read about QM since before quarks, I was never that interested in the history, but the older I get, the more interesting that part is to me.
As an aside, Neal Stephenson's new Bomb Light series touches some of the same history (albeit fictionalized in his case). You might enjoy checking it out.
You’ve batted 1.000 with me all along, so I fully expect to. In the past, I was never much for history, but the older I get, the more interesting I find science history. Helped along by your essays here. Yesterday, I reread your post about Poisson’s spot, and that story may figure into a post I’m working on, a defense of physicalism and realism. (Because I’m appalled by the lack of physical reality in society and, much worse, science.)
"It is a mistake, made in many accounts of the debate, academic, popular, past, and recent, to credit one side or the other with following the only true path. The motion was, and continues to be, necessarily zigzag, dialectical, reciprocal."
As I will be writing over the next couple of weeks, the dialectical tools are implicit for any given perspective whose lens and subsequent feature are distributive, ie. map & location. The call "to be objective" is especially pronounced as the implication is one of "suppressing" whatever urge might arise or showing "restraint." Whatever unit or measure and even the process being described are readily deferred elsewhere with a notable lack of precision. The lens, and the salient features that rise to meet it, imply some insalient tool that is, as far as I can tell, always the opposite whenever lens and feature are both distributive or dialectical. An example of the latter would be an artist who must anticipate some dialectical set of influences within some media, and they must also implement that vision sufficiently, requiring real world skills that are only as sufficient as the body is fluently distributed and coordinated.
Wonderful introduction ... We're still in the early part of the puzzle. As it turns out this is part of a longer story / puzzle involving determinism, computability, understanding, chaos, complexity ... we're just at the 'baby-talk' stage of learning the actual language of reality. Great writing, great discussion, keep pressing forward ... much more enlightenment to be had ...we're only about a century or so into the puzzle ...
If we accept that our theories are always contingent, can a domain of study *ever* be closed? There seems something metaphorically Gödelian in play. An uncountable domain.
Just bought this as a Christmas gift to me. If you're looking for an interesting Christmas gift for a science-loving friend, this is a good choice.
Enjoy!
I'm about 20% through (reading about the Solvay conference) and very much enjoying it. While I've read about QM since before quarks, I was never that interested in the history, but the older I get, the more interesting that part is to me.
As an aside, Neal Stephenson's new Bomb Light series touches some of the same history (albeit fictionalized in his case). You might enjoy checking it out.
You’ve batted 1.000 with me all along, so I fully expect to. In the past, I was never much for history, but the older I get, the more interesting I find science history. Helped along by your essays here. Yesterday, I reread your post about Poisson’s spot, and that story may figure into a post I’m working on, a defense of physicalism and realism. (Because I’m appalled by the lack of physical reality in society and, much worse, science.)
Again magnificent summarisation and writing. Thanks.
Thanks John.
Fantastic post! Most notable for me:
"It is a mistake, made in many accounts of the debate, academic, popular, past, and recent, to credit one side or the other with following the only true path. The motion was, and continues to be, necessarily zigzag, dialectical, reciprocal."
As I will be writing over the next couple of weeks, the dialectical tools are implicit for any given perspective whose lens and subsequent feature are distributive, ie. map & location. The call "to be objective" is especially pronounced as the implication is one of "suppressing" whatever urge might arise or showing "restraint." Whatever unit or measure and even the process being described are readily deferred elsewhere with a notable lack of precision. The lens, and the salient features that rise to meet it, imply some insalient tool that is, as far as I can tell, always the opposite whenever lens and feature are both distributive or dialectical. An example of the latter would be an artist who must anticipate some dialectical set of influences within some media, and they must also implement that vision sufficiently, requiring real world skills that are only as sufficient as the body is fluently distributed and coordinated.
Cheers!
Wonderful introduction ... We're still in the early part of the puzzle. As it turns out this is part of a longer story / puzzle involving determinism, computability, understanding, chaos, complexity ... we're just at the 'baby-talk' stage of learning the actual language of reality. Great writing, great discussion, keep pressing forward ... much more enlightenment to be had ...we're only about a century or so into the puzzle ...
Sounds like an interesting book!
If we accept that our theories are always contingent, can a domain of study *ever* be closed? There seems something metaphorically Gödelian in play. An uncountable domain.