2) the globalization of capital has far outstripped the ability of current labor movements, organized at best on a national level, to conduct an effective defense of the interests of labor within capitalism, let alone to seriously challenge the cap italist system. To develop some form-or forms--of international organization of labor, long an ideological challenge ("Workers of the World Unite") has now become an urgent matter of survival for the labor movements of the world. Here is a challenge, on which I think broad agreement is possible: Even those who think capitalism is capable of indefinite survival must agree that it has functioned best in the past-for example, during the long period of post-World War II expansion when the power of capital has been effectively limited by the countervailing power of labor. Effective exercise of that power has always depended on overcoming the seg mentation of labor due to such factors as locality, race, gender, occupation, etc. , which stilIremain important. Above, I have singled out the two factors that today seem key to me: the split between mental and manual labor, and segmentation by nationality. Let all concerned about the current state of capitalism work to build up the countervailing power of labor, and let time show whether this results in nothing more than the better functioning of capitalism, or whether a new challenge to the system ultimately emerges.
The most important scientist of the twentieth century and the most important artist had their periods of greatest creativity almost simultaneously and in remarkably similar circumstances. This fascinating parallel biography of Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso as young men examines their greatest creations -- Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and Einstein's special theory of relativity. Miller shows how these breakthroughs arose not only from within their respective fields but from larger currents in the intellectual culture of the times. Ultimately, Miller shows how Einstein and Picasso, in a deep and important sense, were both working on the same problem.
Force is one of the most elementary concepts that must be understood in order to understand modern science; it is discussed extensively in textbooks at all levels and is a requirement in most science guidelines. It is also one of the most challenging - how could one idea be involved in such disparate physical phenomena as gravity and radioactivity? Forces in Physics helps the science student by explaining how these ideas originally were developed and provides context to the stunning conclusions that scientists over the centuries have arrived at. It covers the history of all of the four traditional fundamental forces - gravity, electromagnetism, weak nuclear force, and the strong nuclear force - and shows how these forces have, over the years, allowed physicists to better understand the nature of the physical world. Forces in Physics: A Historical Perspective traces the evolution of the concept from the earliest days of the Ancient Greeks to the contemporary attempt to form a GUT (Grand Unified Theory): Aristotle and others in Ancient Greece who developed ideas about physical laws and the introduction of forces into nature; Newton and others in the Scientific Revolution who discovered that forces like gravity applied throughout the universe; the 19th century examinations of thermodynamics and the forces of the very small; and 20th century developments—relativity, quantum mechanics, and more advanced physics—that revolutionized the way we understand force. The volume includes a glossary of terms, a timeline of important events, and a bibliography of resources useful for further research.
Analogy is the core of all thinking. This is the simple but unorthodox premise that Pulitzer Prize -- winning author Douglas Hofstadter and French psychologist Emmanuel Sander defend in their new work. Hofstadter has been grappling with the mysteries of human thought for over thirty years. Now, with his trademark wit and special talent for making complex ideas vivid, he has partnered with Sander to put forth a highly novel perspective on cognition. We are constantly faced with a swirling and intermingling multitude of ill-defined situations. Our brain's job is to try to make sense of this unpredictable, swarming chaos of stimuli. How does it do so? The ceaseless hail of input triggers analogies galore, helping us to pinpoint the essence of what is going on. Often this means the spontaneous evocation of words, sometimes idioms, sometimes the triggering of nameless, long-buried memories. Why did two-year-old Camille proudly exclaim, "I undressed the banana!"? Why do people who hear a story often blurt out, "Exactly the same thing happened to me!" when it was a completely different event? How do we recognize an aggressive driver from a split-second glance in our rearview mirror? What in a friend's remark triggers the offhand reply, "That's just sour grapes"? What did Albert Einstein see that made him suspect that light consists of particles when a century of research had driven the final nail in the coffin of that long-dead idea? The answer to all these questions, of course, is analogy-making -- the meat and potatoes, the heart and soul, the fuel and fire, the gist and the crux, the lifeblood and the wellsprings of thought. Analogy-making, far from happening at rare intervals, occurs at all moments, defining thinking from top to toe, from the tiniest and most fleeting thoughts to the most creative scientific insights. Like Gö, Escher, Bach before it, Surfaces and Essences will profoundly enrich our understanding of our own minds. By plunging the reader into an extraordinary variety of colorful situations involving language, thought, and memory, by revealing bit by bit the constantly churning cognitive mechanisms normally completely hidden from view, and by discovering in them one central, invariant core -- the incessant, unconscious quest for strong analogical links to past experiences -- this book puts forth a radical and deeply surprising new vision of the act of thinking.
At the end of the nineteenth century, some physicists believed that the basic principles underlying their subject were already known, and that physics in the future would only consist of filling in the details. They could hardly have been more wrong. The past century has seen the rise of quantum mechanics, relativity, cosmology, particle physics, and solid-state physics, among other fields. These subjects have fundamentally changed our understanding of space, time, and matter. They have also transformed daily life, inspiring a technological revolution that has included the development of radio, television, lasers, nuclear power, and computers. In Quantum Generations, Helge Kragh, one of the world's leading historians of physics, presents a sweeping account of these extraordinary achievements of the past one hundred years. The first comprehensive one-volume history of twentieth-century physics, the book takes us from the discovery of X rays in the mid-1890s to superstring theory in the 1990s. Unlike most previous histories of physics, written either from a scientific perspective or from a social and institutional perspective, Quantum Generations combines both approaches. Kragh writes about pure science with the expertise of a trained physicist, while keeping the content accessible to nonspecialists and paying careful attention to practical uses of science, ranging from compact disks to bombs. As a historian, Kragh skillfully outlines the social and economic contexts that have shaped the field in the twentieth century. He writes, for example, about the impact of the two world wars, the fate of physics under Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin, the role of military research, the emerging leadership of the United States, and the backlash against science that began in the 1960s. He also shows how the revolutionary discoveries of scientists ranging from Einstein, Planck, and Bohr to Stephen Hawking have been built on the great traditions of earlier centuries. Combining a mastery of detail with a sure sense of the broad contours of historical change, Kragh has written a fitting tribute to the scientists who have played such a decisive role in the making of the modern world.
This authoritative book presents the theoretical development of gravitational physics as it applies to the dynamics of celestial bodies and the analysis of precise astronomical observations. In so doing, it fills the need for a textbook that teaches modern dynamical astronomy with a strong emphasis on the relativistic aspects of the subject produced by the curved geometry of four-dimensional spacetime. The first three chapters review the fundamental principles of celestial mechanics and of special and general relativity. This background material forms the basis for understanding relativistic reference frames, the celestial mechanics of N-body systems, and high-precision astrometry, navigation, and geodesy, which are then treated in the following five chapters. The final chapter provides an overview of the new field of applied relativity, based on recent recommendations from the International Astronomical Union. The book is suitable for teaching advanced undergraduate honors programs and graduate courses, while equally serving as a reference for professional research scientists working in relativity and dynamical astronomy. The authors bring their extensive theoretical and practical experience to the subject. Sergei Kopeikin is a professor at the University of Missouri, while Michael Efroimsky and George Kaplan work at the United States Naval Observatory, one of the world?s premier institutions for expertise in astrometry, celestial mechanics, and timekeeping.