Read Online The Best Australian Science Writing 2012 by Elizabeth Finkel - Free Book Online
Authors: Elizabeth Finkel
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together in a pattern that mirrors the structure of the Periodic Table â for Jim, Mendeleyevâs iconic table is nothing less than a blueprint for a series of atomic-scale, circlonbased machines.
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From the point of view of the physics mainstream, a mechanical universe is pretty hard to accept. To most academic physicistscirclons would seem as quirky as a steam-powered car. I say âwouldâ seem because no university physicist has read Jimâs book and to my knowledge I am the only person with a degree in physics who has. Jimâs vision of the universe is quite literally old-fashioned, for until the middle of the 19th century most physicists did believe our universe was a machine. Descartes had famously proposed that idea in the early 17th century, and for the next 200 years mechanism was the scientific communityâs reigning natural philosophy. In the middle decades of the 19th century some of the finest minds in physics were actively trying to articulate mechanical explanations for such basic effects as electricity and magnetic forces. James Clerk Maxwell, the Newton of his age, spent decades trying to work out a mechanical explanation for the lines of magnetic force, which he tried to imagine as long thin hollow tubes snaking through space. For much of the history of modern Western science most scientific thinkers took it for granted that some kind of mechanical explanation would prevail for all natural phenomena.
But in the latter half of the 19th century a new paradigm worked its way into scientific consciousness and has dominated physics ever since. According to this way of seeing, our universe is not composed of any kind of concrete particles, but of something more ephemeral, what physicists call fields . The model here is the magnetic field, whose presence can be felt in the region around a magnet by its effect on iron filings. The invisible âfield of influenceâ around a magnet gripped the imaginations of 19th century physicists and finally forced their thinking away from a mechanistic worldview. Maxwell himself was at the centre of this movement, along with Michael Faraday, and by the end of the century mechanism as a philosophy of nature had been relegated to the status of a historical curiosity. As the 20th century got underway most professional physicists had come to view the idea of the universe-as-machine ona par with the phlogiston that was once thought to explain fire.
In the 19th century physicists had used field theory to explain electricity, magnetism and light. In the early decades of the 20th century that concept was extended to include matter itself, an extraordinary development that took even physicists by surprise. According to the new discipline of quantum field theory, a âparticleâ of matter is not a âsolidâ object at all, but an undulation or ripple in a quantum field that pervades our universe. Here the very concept of âobjectâ is subverted and all our common-sense understandings of that word no longer hold true. âObjectsâ as we are used to thinking of them donât really exist in the universe of quantum fields. What we are offered instead is a kind of postobject worldview in which the very idea of hard, separate things is replaced by a mysterious web of influence. None of this is easy to come at, and as the great quantum pioneer Niels Bohr once remarked, âanyone who isnât confused by quantum theory hasnât understood itâ. Most physicists initially found all this hard to accept themselves, yet quantum field theories are supported by equations whose experimental predictions have been borne out to dozens of decimal places. Field theories now underlie mainstream understanding of both matter and energy and are critical to the design of many contemporary technologies, including much of the telecommunication technology we have come to rely on, as well as microchips, a large class of which are made
* * * * *
From the point of view of the physics mainstream, a mechanical universe is pretty hard to accept. To most academic physicistscirclons would seem as quirky as a steam-powered car. I say âwouldâ seem because no university physicist has read Jimâs book and to my knowledge I am the only person with a degree in physics who has. Jimâs vision of the universe is quite literally old-fashioned, for until the middle of the 19th century most physicists did believe our universe was a machine. Descartes had famously proposed that idea in the early 17th century, and for the next 200 years mechanism was the scientific communityâs reigning natural philosophy. In the middle decades of the 19th century some of the finest minds in physics were actively trying to articulate mechanical explanations for such basic effects as electricity and magnetic forces. James Clerk Maxwell, the Newton of his age, spent decades trying to work out a mechanical explanation for the lines of magnetic force, which he tried to imagine as long thin hollow tubes snaking through space. For much of the history of modern Western science most scientific thinkers took it for granted that some kind of mechanical explanation would prevail for all natural phenomena.
But in the latter half of the 19th century a new paradigm worked its way into scientific consciousness and has dominated physics ever since. According to this way of seeing, our universe is not composed of any kind of concrete particles, but of something more ephemeral, what physicists call fields . The model here is the magnetic field, whose presence can be felt in the region around a magnet by its effect on iron filings. The invisible âfield of influenceâ around a magnet gripped the imaginations of 19th century physicists and finally forced their thinking away from a mechanistic worldview. Maxwell himself was at the centre of this movement, along with Michael Faraday, and by the end of the century mechanism as a philosophy of nature had been relegated to the status of a historical curiosity. As the 20th century got underway most professional physicists had come to view the idea of the universe-as-machine ona par with the phlogiston that was once thought to explain fire.
In the 19th century physicists had used field theory to explain electricity, magnetism and light. In the early decades of the 20th century that concept was extended to include matter itself, an extraordinary development that took even physicists by surprise. According to the new discipline of quantum field theory, a âparticleâ of matter is not a âsolidâ object at all, but an undulation or ripple in a quantum field that pervades our universe. Here the very concept of âobjectâ is subverted and all our common-sense understandings of that word no longer hold true. âObjectsâ as we are used to thinking of them donât really exist in the universe of quantum fields. What we are offered instead is a kind of postobject worldview in which the very idea of hard, separate things is replaced by a mysterious web of influence. None of this is easy to come at, and as the great quantum pioneer Niels Bohr once remarked, âanyone who isnât confused by quantum theory hasnât understood itâ. Most physicists initially found all this hard to accept themselves, yet quantum field theories are supported by equations whose experimental predictions have been borne out to dozens of decimal places. Field theories now underlie mainstream understanding of both matter and energy and are critical to the design of many contemporary technologies, including much of the telecommunication technology we have come to rely on, as well as microchips, a large class of which are made
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