The idea of infinity plays a crucial role in our understanding of the universe, with the infinite spacetime continuum perhaps the best-known example - but is spacetime really continuous? Throughout the history of science, many have felt that the continuum model is an unphysical idealization, and that spacetime should be thought of as 'quantized' at the smallest of scales. Combining novel conceptual analysis, a fresh historical perspective, and concrete physical examples, this unique book t...

The publication of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species in 1859 marked a dramatic turning point in scientific thought, but it also ignited a firestorm of controversy. More than two decades following his intercontinental voyage aboard the HMS Beagle, the English naturalist carefully advanced his theory of evolution by natural selection, offering coherent and highly readable views of adaptation, survival of the fittest, and other concepts that form the foundation of moder...

E=mc2: It may be Einstein’s most well-known contribution to modern science, but how many people understand the thought process or physics behind this famous equation?In this collection of his seven most important essays on physics, Einstein guides his reader step-by-step through the many layers of scientific theory that formed a starting point for his discoveries. By both supporting and refuting the theories and scientific efforts of his predecessors, Einstein reve...

This concise book introduces nonphysicists to the core philosophical issues surrounding the nature and structure of space and time, and is also an ideal resource for physicists interested in the conceptual foundations of space-time theory.Tim Maudlin's broad historical overview examines Aristotelian and Newtonian accounts of space and time, and traces how Galileo's conceptions of relativity and space-time led to Einstein's special and general theories of relativity. Maudlin explain...

Why is the future so different from the past? Why does the past affect the future and not the other way around? What does quantum mechanics really tell us about the world? In this important and accessible book, Huw Price throws fascinating new light on some of the great mysteries of modern physics, and connects them in a wholly original way. Price begins with the mystery of the arrow of time. Why, for example, does disorder always increase, as required by the second law of thermodynamics? ...

The US economy today is confronted with the prospect of extended stagnation. This book explores why. Thomas I. Palley argues that the Great Recession and destruction of shared prosperity is due to flawed economic policy over the past thirty years. One flaw was the growth model adopted after 1980 that relied on debt and asset price inflation to fuel growth instead of wages. A second flaw was the model of globalization that created an economic gash. Third, financial deregulation and the hous...

This textbook is distinguished from other texts on the subject by the depth of the presentation and the discussion of the calculus of moving surfaces, which is an extension of tensor calculus to deforming manifolds.Designed for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, this text invites its audience to take a fresh look at previously learned material through the prism of tensor calculus. Once the framework is mastered, the student is introduced to new material which includes di...

The development of geometry from Euclid to Euler to Lobachevsky, Bolyai, Gauss and Riemann is a story that is often broken into parts – axiomatic geometry, non-Euclidean geometry and differential geometry. This poses a problem for undergraduates: Which part is geometry? What is the big picture to which these parts belong? In this introduction to differential geometry, the parts are united with all of their interrelations, motivated by the history of the parallel postulate. Beginning with t...

In this classic, David Bohm was the first to offer us his causal interpretation of the quantum theory. Causality and Chance in Modern Physics continues to make possible further insight into the meaning of the quantum theory and to suggest ways of extending the theory into new directions.

Differential geometry arguably offers the smoothest transition from the standard university mathematics sequence of the first four semesters in calculus, linear algebra, and differential equations to the higher levels of abstraction and proof encountered at the upper division by mathematics majors. Today it is possible to describe differential geometry as "the study of structures on the tangent space," and this text develops this point of view.This book, unlike other introductory t...

The third edition of Quantum Non-Locality and Relativity has been carefully updated to reflect significant developments, including a new chapter covering important recent work in the foundations of physics.A new edition of the premier philosophical study of Bell’s Theorem and its implication for the relativistic account of space and timeDiscusses Roderich Tumiulka’s explicit, relativistic theory that can reproduce the quantum mechanical violation of Bell’s ...

The third edition of Van Kampen's standard work has been revised and updated. The main difference with the second edition is that the contrived application of the quantum master equation in section 6 of chapter XVII has been replaced with a satisfactory treatment of quantum fluctuations. Apart from that throughout the text corrections have been made and a number of references to later developments have been included. From the recent textbooks the following are the most relevant.C.W.Gardine...