Screen LibraryThird thoughts /
"For more than four decades, one of the most captivating and celebrated science communicators of our time has challenged the public to think carefully about the foundations of nature and the inseparable entanglement of science and society. In Third Thoughts Steven Weinberg casts a wide net: fro...
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| Main Authors: | |
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| Published: |
The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,
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| Publisher Address: | Cambridge, Massachusetts : |
| Publication Dates: | 2018. |
| Literature type: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Subjects: | |
| Summary: |
"For more than four decades, one of the most captivating and celebrated science communicators of our time has challenged the public to think carefully about the foundations of nature and the inseparable entanglement of science and society. In Third Thoughts Steven Weinberg casts a wide net: from the cosmological to the personal, from astronomy, quantum mechanics, and the history of science to the limitations of current knowledge, the art of discovery, and the rewards of getting things wrong. Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics and author of the classic The First Three Minutes, Weinberg shares his views on some of the most fundamental and fascinating aspects of physics and the universe. But he does not seclude science behind disciplinary walls, or shy away from politics, taking on what he sees as the folly of manned spaceflight, the harms of inequality, and the importance of public goods. His point of view is rationalist, realist, reductionist, and devoutly secularist. Weinberg is that great rarity, a prize-winning physicist who is entertaining and accessible. The essays in Third Thoughts, some of which appear here for the first time, will engage, provoke, and inform--and never lose sight of the human dimension of scientific discovery and its consequences for our endless drive to probe the workings of the cosmos."--Dust jacket. |
| Carrier Form: | viii, 223 pages ; 22 cm |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: |
9780674975323 0674975324 |
| Index Number: | Q171 |
| CLC: | N49 |
| Call Number: | N49/W423 |
| Contents: | Preface -- I. Science history. The uses of astronomy ; The art of discovery ; From Rutherford to the LHC ; Educators and academics, underground in Texas ; The rise of the standard models ; Long times and short times ; Keeping an eye on the present : Whig history of science ; The Whig history of science : an exchange -- II. Physics and cosmology. What is an elementary particle? ; The universe we still don't know ; Varieties of symmetry ; The Higgs, and beyond ; Why the Higgs? ; The trouble with quantum mechanics -- III. Public matters. Obama gets space funding right ; The crisis of big science ; Liberal disappointment ; Keep loopholes open ; Against manned space flight ; Skeptics and scientists -- IV. Personal matters. Change course ; Writing about science ; On being wrong ; The craft of science, and the craft of art ; New York to Austin, and return. |