Minkowski Spacetime: A Hundred Years Later

Minkowski Spacetime: A Hundred Years Later
Author: Vesselin Petkov
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 326
Release: 2010-03-11
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9048134757

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Celebrating the one hundredth anniversary of the 1909 publication of Minkowski’s seminal paper "Space and Time", this volume includes a fresh translation as well as the original in German, and a number of contributed papers on the still-controversial subject.

Minkowski Spacetime: A Hundred Years Later

Minkowski Spacetime: A Hundred Years Later
Author: Vesselin Petkov
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 326
Release: 2010-10-24
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9789048136292

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Celebrating the one hundredth anniversary of the 1909 publication of Minkowski’s seminal paper "Space and Time", this volume includes a fresh translation as well as the original in German, and a number of contributed papers on the still-controversial subject.

Space, Time, and Spacetime

Space, Time, and Spacetime
Author: Vesselin Petkov
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2010-09-02
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3642135382

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Dedicated to the centennial anniversary of Minkowski's discovery of spacetime, this volume contains papers, most presented at the Third International Conference on the Nature and Ontology of Spacetime, that address some of the deepest questions in physics.

Galileo Unbound

Galileo Unbound
Author: David D. Nolte
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2018-07-12
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0192528505

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Galileo Unbound traces the journey that brought us from Galileo's law of free fall to today's geneticists measuring evolutionary drift, entangled quantum particles moving among many worlds, and our lives as trajectories traversing a health space with thousands of dimensions. Remarkably, common themes persist that predict the evolution of species as readily as the orbits of planets or the collapse of stars into black holes. This book tells the history of spaces of expanding dimension and increasing abstraction and how they continue today to give new insight into the physics of complex systems. Galileo published the first modern law of motion, the Law of Fall, that was ideal and simple, laying the foundation upon which Newton built the first theory of dynamics. Early in the twentieth century, geometry became the cause of motion rather than the result when Einstein envisioned the fabric of space-time warped by mass and energy, forcing light rays to bend past the Sun. Possibly more radical was Feynman's dilemma of quantum particles taking all paths at once — setting the stage for the modern fields of quantum field theory and quantum computing. Yet as concepts of motion have evolved, one thing has remained constant, the need to track ever more complex changes and to capture their essence, to find patterns in the chaos as we try to predict and control our world.

Springer Handbook of Spacetime

Springer Handbook of Spacetime
Author: Abhay Ashtekar
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 883
Release: 2014-09-01
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3642419925

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The Springer Handbook of Spacetime is dedicated to the ground-breaking paradigm shifts embodied in the two relativity theories, and describes in detail the profound reshaping of physical sciences they ushered in. It includes in a single volume chapters on foundations, on the underlying mathematics, on physical and astrophysical implications, experimental evidence and cosmological predictions, as well as chapters on efforts to unify general relativity and quantum physics. The Handbook can be used as a desk reference by researchers in a wide variety of fields, not only by specialists in relativity but also by researchers in related areas that either grew out of, or are deeply influenced by, the two relativity theories: cosmology, astronomy and astrophysics, high energy physics, quantum field theory, mathematics, and philosophy of science. It should also serve as a valuable resource for graduate students and young researchers entering these areas, and for instructors who teach courses on these subjects. The Handbook is divided into six parts. Part A: Introduction to Spacetime Structure. Part B: Foundational Issues. Part C: Spacetime Structure and Mathematics. Part D: Confronting Relativity theories with observations. Part E: General relativity and the universe. Part F: Spacetime beyond Einstein.

Ether and Modernity

Ether and Modernity
Author: Jaume Navarro
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 263
Release: 2018-08-30
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0192517791

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Ether and Modernity offers a snapshot of the status of an epistemic object, the "ether" (or "aether"), in the early twentieth century. The contributed papers show that the ether was often regarded as one of the objects of modernity, hand in hand with the electron, radioactivity or X-rays, and not simply as the stubborn residue of an old-fashioned, long-discarded science. The prestige and authority of scientists and popularisers like Oliver Lodge and Arthur Eddington in Britain, Phillip Lenard in Germany or Dayton C. Miller in the USA was instrumental in the preservation, defence or even re-emergence of the ether in the 1920s. Moreover, the consolidation of wireless communications and radio broadcasting, indeed a very modern technology, brought the ether into audiences that would otherwise never have heard about such an esoteric entity. The ether also played a pivotal role among some artists in the early twentieth century: the values of modernism found in the complexities and contradictions of modern physics, such as wireless action or wave-particle puzzles, a fertile ground for the development of new artistic languages; in literature as much as in the pictorial and performing arts. Essays on the intellectual foundations of Umberto Boccioni's art, the linguistic techniques of Lodge, and Ernst Mach's considerations on aesthetics and physics witness to the imbricate relationship between the ether and modernism. Last but not least, the ether played a fundamental part in the resurgence of modern spiritualism in the aftermath of the Great War. This book examines the complex array of meanings, strategies and milieus that enabled the ether to remain an active part in scientific and cultural debates well into the 1930s, but not beyond. This portrait may be easily regarded as the swan song of an epistemic object that was soon to fade away as shown by Paul Dirac's unsuccessful attempt to resuscitate some kind of aether in 1951, with which this book finishes.

Einstein's Italian Mathematicians

Einstein's Italian Mathematicians
Author: Judith R. Goodstein
Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.
Total Pages: 231
Release: 2018-07-20
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1470428466

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In the first decade of the twentieth century as Albert Einstein began formulating a revolutionary theory of gravity, the Italian mathematician Gregorio Ricci was entering the later stages of what appeared to be a productive if not particularly memorable career, devoted largely to what his colleagues regarded as the dogged development of a mathematical language he called the absolute differential calculus. In 1912, the work of these two dedicated scientists would intersect—and physics and mathematics would never be the same. Einstein's Italian Mathematicians chronicles the lives and intellectual contributions of Ricci and his brilliant student Tullio Levi-Civita, including letters, interviews, memoranda, and other personal and professional papers, to tell the remarkable, little-known story of how two Italian academicians, of widely divergent backgrounds and temperaments, came to provide the indispensable mathematical foundation—today known as the tensor calculus—for general relativity.

Einstein's Genie

Einstein's Genie
Author: Graham Nerlich
Publisher: Minkowski Institute Press
Total Pages: 229
Release: 2013-08-23
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1927763142

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This book is about spacetime, and how, in General Relativity, it performs its widely accepted role of explaining all the phenomena of gravity. Space and time have long been contentious presences in theories of mechanics because of their metaphysical peculiarities. Philosophical worries continue to fog a clear understanding of just how spacetime performs this role. In early sections of his revolutionary paper of 1916, Einstein claimed that his use of a new style of formulation removes "the last remnant of physical objectivity from space and time". His satisfaction in banishing these metaphysical anxieties was evident. However in 1917 it was shown his claim was ungrounded. He readily accepted the criticism: it left intact all the maths and physics of the theory. These amply justify the widespread, orthodox view of spacetime's fundamental role in the theory. Einstein banished no demon but rather released a genie - spacetime. However, his hostility continued, resulting in attempts to rewrite the role of spacetime. These had some later influence but never caught on. Einstein set supreme importance on the role of imagination in scientific theory and valued it as his most significant gift. In science, perhaps in culture generally, relativity is unsurpassed in its imaginative conceptual daring. Yet he and others paused at its metaphysical novelty and radicalism: hostility to spacetime persists. This book presents an unqualified philosophical defence of the conceptual coherence and uniqueness of spatiotemporality. It offers an alternative to the relationist/substantivalist dilemma; it explains Minkowski's derivation of spacetime without the light postulate; it defends, clarifies and stresses the deep role of spacetime in the standard novelties of both relativity theories. A study of spacetime in relativity shows how an insubstantial entity can nevertheless be concrete. That solves the metaphysical worry over its intelligibility and reveals it as fundamental to ontology.

Brain, Mind and Consciousness in the History of Neuroscience

Brain, Mind and Consciousness in the History of Neuroscience
Author: C.U.M. Smith
Publisher: Springer Science & Business
Total Pages: 374
Release: 2014-04-23
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9401787743

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This volume of essays examines the problem of mind, looking at how the problem has appeared to neuroscientists (in the widest sense) from classical antiquity through to contemporary times. Beginning with a look at ventricular neuropsychology in antiquity, this book goes on to look at Spinozan ideas on the links between mind and body, Thomas Willis and the foundation of Neurology, Hooke’s mechanical model of the mind and Joseph Priestley’s approach to the mind-body problem. The volume offers a chapter on the 19th century Ottoman perspective on western thinking. Further chapters trace the work of nineteenth century scholars including George Henry Lewes, Herbert Spencer and Emil du Bois-Reymond. The book covers significant work from the twentieth century, including an examination of Alfred North Whitehead and the history of consciousness, and particular attention is given to the development of quantum consciousness. Chapters on slavery and the self and the development of an understanding of Dualism bring this examination up to date on the latest 21st century work in the field. At the heart of this book is the matter of how we define the problem of consciousness itself: has there been any progress in our understanding of the working of mind and brain? This work at the interface between science and the humanities will appeal to experts from across many fields who wish to develop their understanding of the problem of consciousness, including scholars of Neuroscience, Behavioural Science and the History of Science.

Bulgarski glasove v chuzhbina: filosofski akcenti

Bulgarski glasove v chuzhbina: filosofski akcenti
Author: Tatyana Batuleva
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2022-07-25
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 3903068322

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The aim of the volume "Bulgarian Voices Abroad. Philosophical Accents" is to present the main ideas and achievements of authors of Bulgarian origin - philosophers, intellectuals and cultural figures, who worked mainly abroad, such as Dr. Petar Beron, Radoslav Tsanov, Yanko Yanev, Georgi Gachev, Assen Ignatov, Tsvetan Todorov, Julia Kristeva and others. This "outward looking" view also allows us a reverse perspective: turning the look to ourselves becomes an occasion to see ourselves through the eyes of the other, to rethink the specifics of the foreign and the own/native. The point of view of one who is sufficiently "other", distanced from events and paradigms, can give us an unbiased assessment of them. At the same time, he is sufficiently near to "us" for his analyzes to be relevant to "our" reality as well.