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Drawing Theories Apart The Dispersion of Feynman Diagrams in Postwar Physics

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ISBN-10: 0226422674

ISBN-13: 9780226422671

Edition: 2005

Authors: David Kaiser

List price: $49.00
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Description:

Feynman diagrams have revolutionized nearly every aspect of theoretical physics since the middle of the twentieth century. Introduced by the American physicist Richard Feynman (1918-88) soon after World War II as a means of simplifying lengthy calculations in quantum electrodynamics, they soon gained adherents in many branches of the discipline. Yet as new physicists adopted the tiny line drawings, they also adapted the diagrams and introduced their own interpretations. Drawing Theories Apart traces how generations of young theorists learned to frame their research in terms of the diagrams—and how both the diagrams and their users were molded in the process.Drawing on rich archival…    
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Book details

List price: $49.00
Copyright year: 2005
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Publication date: 6/15/2005
Binding: Paperback
Pages: 376
Size: 6.10" wide x 8.94" long x 1.16" tall
Weight: 1.430

David Kaiser is Germeshausen Professor of the History of Science, Department Head of the Program in Science, Technology, and Society, and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Physics at MIT. He is the author of Drawing Theories Apart: The Dispersion of the Feynman Diagrams in Postwar Physics, and editor of Pedagogy and the Practice of Science: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (MIT Press).

Preface and Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction: Pedagogy and the Institutions of Theory
Richard Feynman and His Diagrams
Paper Tools and the Practice of Theory
Pedagogy and Postwar Physics
Overview: The Two Meanings of "Dispersion"
Dispersing the Diagrams, 1948-54
An Introduction in the Poconos
Quantum Electrodynamics and the Problem of Infinities
Initial Reception and Lingering Confusion
Evidence of Dispersion
Freeman Dyson and the Postdoc Cascade
The Rise of Postdoctoral Training
Dyson as Diagrammatic Ambassador
Life and Physics at the Institute for Advanced Study
The Postdoc Cascade
A Pedagogical Field Theory
International Dispersion
The Diagrams' Diaspora
Feynman Diagrams in Great Britain
Feynman Diagrams in Japan
Feynman Diagrams in the Soviet Union
Tacit and Explicit Knowledges
Dispersion in Form, Use, and Meaning
Seeds of Dispersion
The Feynman-Dyson Split
Perturbative Methods Fail, Feynman Diagrams Flourish
Family Resemblances
Kroll's Perturbative Bookkeepers
Marshak's Meson Markers
Climbing Bethe's Ladder: Feynman Diagrams and the Many-Body Problem
Training Theorists for House and Field
Feynman Diagrams in and Out of Field Theory, 1955-70
Teaching the Diagrams in an Age of Textbooks
The Postwar Age of Textbooks
The New Diagrammatic Textbooks
Pedagogy and the Pictures' Place
Doodling toward a New "Theory"
Dispersion Relations
Crossing to a New Representation
From Bookkeepers to Pole Finders: Polology and the Landau Rules
Chew the Program Builder: Nuclear Democracy and the Bootstrap
Diagrammatic Bootstrapping and the Emergence of New Theories
"Democratic" Diagrams in Berkeley and Princeton
Geoffrey Chew: A Scientist's Politics of Democracy in 1950s America
Pedagogical Reforms: "Secret Seminars" and "Wild Merrymaking"
The View from Princeton
Conditions of Diagrammatic Possibilities
Paper Tools and the Theorists' Way of Life
Why Did the Diagrams Stick? Inculcation and Reification
In Search of the Vanishing Scientific Theory
Feynman Diagrams in the Physical Review, 1949-54
Feynman Diagrams in Proceedings of the Royal Society, 1950-54
Feynman Diagrams in Progress of Theoretical Physics, 1949-54
Feynman Diagrams in Soryushi-ron Kenkyu, 1949-52
Feynman Diagrams in Zhurnal eksperimental'noi i teoreticheskoi fiziki, 1952-59
Feynman Diagrams in Other Journals, 1950-54
Interviews
Bibliography
Index