出版社: University of Oxford Press
副标题: the quest to understand matter from Greek atoms to quantum fields
出版年: 2017-9-4
定价: USD 27.95
装帧: Hardcover
ISBN: 9780198759713
内容简介 · · · · · ·
Everything around us is made of 'stuff', from planets, to books, to our own bodies. Whatever it is, we call it matter or material substance. It is solid; it has mass. But what is matter, exactly? We are taught in school that matter is not continuous, but discrete. As a few of the philosophers of ancient Greece once speculated, nearly two and a half thousand years ago, matter co...
Everything around us is made of 'stuff', from planets, to books, to our own bodies. Whatever it is, we call it matter or material substance. It is solid; it has mass. But what is matter, exactly? We are taught in school that matter is not continuous, but discrete. As a few of the philosophers of ancient Greece once speculated, nearly two and a half thousand years ago, matter comes in 'lumps', and science has relentlessly peeled away successive layers of matter to reveal its ultimate constituents.
Surely, we can't keep doing this indefinitely. We imagine that we should eventually run up against some kind of ultimately fundamental, indivisible type of stuff, the building blocks from which everything in the Universe is made. The English physicist Paul Dirac called this 'the dream of philosophers'. But science has discovered that the foundations of our Universe are not as solid or as certain and dependable as we might have once imagined. They are instead built from ghosts and phantoms, of a peculiar quantum kind. And, at some point on this exciting journey of scientific discovery, we lost our grip on the reassuringly familiar concept of mass.
How did this happen? How did the answers to our questions become so complicated and so difficult to comprehend? In Mass Jim Baggott explains how we come to find ourselves here, confronted by a very different understanding of the nature of matter, the origin of mass, and its implications for our understanding of the material world. Ranging from the Greek philosophers Leucippus and Democritus, and their theories of atoms and void, to the development of quantum field theory and the discovery of a Higgs boson-like particle, he explores our changing understanding of the nature of matter, and the fundamental related concept of mass.
作者简介 · · · · · ·
James Edward Baggott (born 2 March 1957 in Southampton) is a British science writer living in Reading, Berkshire, England who writes about science, philosophy and science history. Baggott is the author of nine books, including Farewell to Reality, Origins: The Scientific Story of Creation, Higgs: The Invention and Discovery of the God Particle and The Quantum Story: A History i...
James Edward Baggott (born 2 March 1957 in Southampton) is a British science writer living in Reading, Berkshire, England who writes about science, philosophy and science history. Baggott is the author of nine books, including Farewell to Reality, Origins: The Scientific Story of Creation, Higgs: The Invention and Discovery of the God Particle and The Quantum Story: A History in 40 moments. Baggott is a regular contributor to New Scientist,[2] and Nature.
原文摘录 · · · · · ·
Mass的书评 · · · · · · ( 全部 8 条 )
本书解决了很多科普书中都没有解释清楚的问题
【品*鉴】世界是由什么构成的
这篇书评可能有关键情节透露
你有没有想过,世界是由什么构成的,当一个物体,拆分再拆分,直到不可拆,最小的颗粒是什么?这本书很科学地解释了质子,电子,原子,粒子,暗物质等,附带词汇表和注释,每一章节后面,还清晰地归纳了5个客观的观点,避免误解,帮助我们了解到组成宇宙的大大小小的物质。 从... (展开)人类对物质构成的探索历程
这篇书评可能有关键情节透露
作者在书中回顾了人类对物质尤其是原子的认识历程,讲述了牛顿,爱因斯坦,波尔等人在各自研究领域探索的故事,重点介绍了与这些人相关的力学定律,相对论,波动说,夸克等诸多理论和和概念是如何建立和提出的。作为一个物理学爱好者,个人感觉作者在书中为了把涉及到的专业理... (展开)一本非常漂亮的关于理论物理发展史和主要概念框架的科普
> 更多书评 8篇
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1 有用 AyNoite 2020-04-09 11:39:43
把质量解释为行为而非固有属性,听起来好像是个解释,但仔细想想,这究竟算是解释吗?把A解释成B,那B又是什么呢?不过好像人生中很多事情都这样,问就是别认真,认真你就输了……
1 有用 AyNoite 2020-04-09 11:39:43
把质量解释为行为而非固有属性,听起来好像是个解释,但仔细想想,这究竟算是解释吗?把A解释成B,那B又是什么呢?不过好像人生中很多事情都这样,问就是别认真,认真你就输了……