The fascinating story of how quantum mechanics went mainstream.The discovery of the quantumthe idea, born in the early 1900s in a remote corner of physics, that energy comes in finite packets instead of infinitely divisible quantitiesplanted a rich set of metaphors in the popular imagination.Quantum imagery and language now bombard us like an endless stream of photons. Phrases such as multiverses, quantum leaps, alternate universes, the uncertainty principle, and Schrdinger's cat get reinvented continually in cartoons and movies, coffee mugs and T-shirts, and fiction and philosophy, reinterpreted by each new generation of artists and writers.Is a "quantum leap" big or small? How uncertain is the uncertainty principle? Is this barrage of quantum vocabulary pretentious and wacky, or a fundamental shift in the way we think?All the above, say Robert P. Crease and Alfred Scharff Goldhaber in this pathbreaking book. The authorsone a philosopher,...
- ISBN13 9781365331367
- Publish Date 15 August 2016
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 25 June 2021
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Lulu.com
- Format eBook (OEB)
- Language English