God versus Particle Physics : A No-Score Draw.
Title:
God versus Particle Physics : A No-Score Draw.
Author:
Davies, John.
ISBN:
9781845405601
Personal Author:
Edition:
1st ed.
Physical Description:
1 online resource (241 pages)
Contents:
Cover -- Contents -- Front matter -- Title page -- Copyright page -- Body matter -- Chapter 1: Prologue -- Chapter 2: The No-Score Draw -- Chapter 3: Ayers Rock -- Chapter 4: The Big Bang: Matter of Fact or Metaphysics? -- Chapter 5: How Did It All Happen? -- Chapter 6: Know Thyself -- Chapter 7: Waves, Words, Bits, and Boundaries -- Chapter 8: Four Kinds of Physics -- Chapter 9: Uncertainty, Parallel Universes, and Common Sense -- Chapter 10: Reductionism: The Search for the Constituents of Stuff -- Chapter 11: Postulating the Scientifically Unacceptable -- Chapter 12: Positivism: Three Cheers for Philosophy -- Chapter 13: The Search for Truth -- Chapter 14: Keeping Up Appearances -- Chapter 15: Facts, Figures, and Feasibility -- Chapter 16: The CERN Metaphorical-Hypothetical-Particle Super-collider -- Chapter 17: Hello? Is Anybody There? -- Chapter 18: Please Hold. An Operator Will Be With You As Soon As Possible -- Chapter 19: Extra Time… -- Chapter 20: A Stairway to the Stars -- Back matter -- References.
Abstract:
The book presents the conclusions of a psychologist seeking to make sense of contemporary particle physics as described in a number of popular science texts and media articles, written by physicists, seeking to explain the workings of the sub-atomic world. The accounts, it is argued, are a) mutually exclusive and contradictory, and b) metaphysical or magical in essence.Themes of the book include: a discussion of the way we allow physicists to invent things that have no perceivable qualities, on the grounds that they 'must' be there because otherwise their preconceptions are wrong or their sums don't work; that, from a psychological perspective, contemporary theory in particle physics has the same properties as any other act of faith, and the same limitations as belief in God; and that physics has now reached a point at which increasingly physicists research their own psychological constructions rather than anything which is unambiguously 'there' or real.It encourages people to as...
Local Note:
Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2017. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.
Genre:
Electronic Access:
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