DigitalTerrorist
09-03-2010, 11:59 PM
Part One - The Story of The Atom
In the essay on Relativity, I stated that the Theory of Relativity was one of the two most important ideas of 20th Century science. Relativity is a deviation from Newtonian Mechanics (also known as common sense!). The deviations were not discovered until this Century because they are only noticeable at high speeds and under very intense gravitational fields. There is another 20th Century idea that also violates Newtonian Mechanics. This is called Quantum Mechanics.
In this essay I will give a taste of the strange and fascinating world of the atom. I will try to keep it general and simple because these ideas are even more weird than Relativity (if that is possible).
The Ancient Greeks proposed that matter could not be divided indefinitely. They speculated that matter was made up of units called atoms. The word comes from a Greek word meaning single item or portion. They assumed that atoms were solid, different characteristics of substances being determined by the different shapes that atoms had. This atomic idea never really became popular.
During the 16th Century, chemists worked out that behaviour of gases. If they doubled the volume of a gas, its pressure halved. If they halved its volume, its temperature doubled. It was also found that chemical reactions always took place in fixed ratios. For example one volume of oxygen always combined with two volumes of hydrogen to produce water (assuming the gases were at the same temperature and pressure). Results like these lead to the idea of atoms. The Atomic Theory was by far the best way to explain these and other phenomena.
When the idea of elements came, it was assumed that different elements had different atoms. John Dalton showed that each element had an atom that differed in weight (correctly, mass) to other atoms. So now we say that a Carbon atom has a relative mass of 12, Oxygen has one of 16. The unit is the Hydrogen atom, the lightest of all the atoms.
During the middle of the 19th Century, James Maxwell explained the gas laws by applying statistics to the random motions of atoms. He showed that when you heat a gas you make its molecules go faster. These strike the surface of the container with more force, thus increasing the gas pressure. To keep the pressure the same the volume has to be increased. Atoms were now taken for granted and treated as featureless spheres (i.e. little balls).
At this point the idea that atoms were featureless spheres was overturned by several discoveries made towards the end of the 19th Century. Firstly, there were experiments in electricity and magnetism which indicated the existence of particles with less mass than the Hydrogen atom. The electron was the most famous of these. Secondly, atoms were found to be more complex that previously thought when radioactivity was discovered. Atoms were throwing out bits and changing to other atoms; atoms could take and give an electric charge.
From various observations and experiments it was eventually decided that an atom was made up of three particles:
Protons - these were charged with electricity that was positive and contained most of the mass of atoms.
Electrons - these were very light particles (1/1800th the mass of a Hydrogen atom!) with a negative electric charge exactly equal to the charge on a proton.
Neutrons - neutral particles with a mass similar to protons but with no charge.
In an atom, the protons and neutrons were in the central regions of the atom (called the nucleus) while the electrons revolved around at high speed. It was the outer electrons that interacted when atoms reacted chemically with other atoms. It was these electrons that were involved in electrical effects. It was the number of protons that determined how many electrons there were (they had to be the same). This number (called the Atomic Number) determined how the atom behaved, i.e. what element it was. Hydrogen atoms have 1 proton and 1 electron, Oxygen has 8 of each, Uranium has 92 of each. The electrons were held in orbit by electric attraction (positive and negative attract), much as the planets were held in orbit around the sun by the attractive force of gravity.
Protons, neutron and electrons are discussed in more detail as Sub-Atomic Particles.
The above description of the atom is the Newtonian (or Classical) description. It is possible to picture it and it makes sense. Unfortunately, this description violates Maxwell's Laws of Electromagnetism. Maxwell's Laws of Electromagnetism were very powerful tools. However they could not explain how an atom could be stable. Under those laws, an electrically charged object (like an electron) that was changing direction (in orbit around the nucleus of an atom) should be radiating energy away until it spiralled into the nucleus! Clearly this does not happen. Atoms are stable. Furthermore, there were a few other observations about atoms that were not quite right.
Of course, atoms did absorb and radiate energy. The problem was that this process was strictly controlled. Atoms only absorbed specific wavelengths of energy. Sodium, for example, radiated a lot of yellow light (hence its use in street lamps), Potassium radiated lilac (hence the colour of most fireworks). This was a major flaw in the physics of the turn of the century. Physics had other problems - phenomena that didn't work as predicted: the way a hot, glowing body radiated energy at a given temperature (the Black Body Problem); the way metals produced electricity when light shone on them (the Photoelectric Effect); the way atoms decayed when they were radioactive. Something was wrong with the state of Physics. What was needed was a revolution in Physics. Unlike the onset of relativity which was the brainchild of one man, this new idea would spawn from many minds over a generation.
Western philosophical perspectives
The philosophical perspectives on the meaning of life are those ideologies which explain life in terms of ideals or abstractions defined by humans.
Ancient Greek philosophy
Plato and Aristotle in The School of Athens fresco, by Raphael.
Platonism
Main article: Platonism
Plato was one of the earliest, most influential philosophers to date — mostly for realism about the existence of universals. In the Theory of Forms, universals do not physically exist, like objects, but exist as ghostly, heavenly forms. In The Republic, the Socrates character's dialogue describes the Form of the Good. The Idea of the Good is ekgonos (offspring) of the Good, the ideal, perfect nature of goodness, hence an absolute measure of justice.
In Platonism, the meaning of life is in attaining the highest form of knowledge, which is the Idea (Form) of the Good, from which all good and just things derive utility and value. Human beings are duty-bound to pursue the good, but no one can succeed in that pursuit without philosophical reasoning, which allows for true knowledge.
Aristotelianism
Main article: Aristotelian ethics
Aristotle, an apprentice of Plato, was another, early, most influential philosopher, who argued that ethical knowledge is not certain knowledge (like metaphysics and epistemology), but is general knowledge. Because it is not a theoretical discipline, a person had to study and practice in order to become 'good', thus if the person were to become virtuous, he could not simply study what virtue is, he had to be virtuous, via virtuous activities. To do this, Aristotle established what is virtuous:
Every skill and every inquiry, and similarly, every action and choice of action, is thought to have some good as its object. This is why the good has rightly been defined as the object of all endeavor [...]
Everything is done with a goal, and that goal is "good".
—Nicomachean Ethics 1.1
Yet, if action A is done towards achieving goal B, then goal B also would have a goal, goal C, and goal C also would have a goal, and so would continue this pattern, until something stopped its infinite regression. Aristotle's solution is the Highest Good, which is desirable for its own sake, it is its own goal. The Highest Good is not desirable for the sake of achieving some other good, and all other ‘goods’ desirable for its sake. This involves achieving eudaemonia, usually translated as "happiness", "well-being", "flourishing", and "excellence".
What is the highest good in all matters of action? To the name, there is almost complete agreement; for uneducated and educated alike call it happiness, and make happiness identical with the good life and successful living. They disagree, however, about the meaning of happiness.
—Nicomachean Ethics 1.4
Cynicism
In the Hellenistic period, the Cynic philosophers said that the purpose of life is living a life of Virtue that agrees with Nature. Happiness depends upon being self-sufficient and master of one's mental attitude; suffering is consequence of false judgments of value, which cause negative emotions and a concomitant vicious character.
The Cynical life rejects conventional desires for wealth, power, health, and fame, by being free of the possessions acquired in pursuing the conventional.[60][61] As reasoning creatures, people could achieve happiness via rigorous training, by living in a way natural to human beings. The world equally belongs to everyone, so suffering is caused by false judgments of what is valuable and what is worthless per the customs and conventions of society.
Cyrenaicism
Cyrenaicism, founded by Aristippus of Cyrene, was an early Socratic school that emphasised only one side of Socrates's teachings — that happiness is one of the ends of moral action and that pleasure is the supreme good; thus a hedonistic world view, wherein bodily gratification is more intense than mental pleasure. Cyrenaics prefer immediate gratification to the long-term gain of delayed gratification; denial is unpleasant unhappiness.[62][63]
Epicureanism
Main article: Epicureanism
Bust of Epicurus leaning against his disciple Metrodorus in the Louvre Museum.
To Epicurus, the greatest good is in seeking modest pleasures, to attain tranquility and freedom from fear (ataraxia) via knowledge, friendship, and virtuous, temperate living; bodily pain (aponia) is absent through one's knowledge of the workings of the world and of the limits of one's desires. Combined, freedom from pain and freedom from fear are happiness in its highest form. Epicurus' lauded enjoyment of simple pleasures is quasi-ascetic abstention from sex and the appetites:
When we say . . . that pleasure is the end and aim, we do not mean the pleasures of the prodigal or the pleasures of sensuality, as we are understood to do, by some, through ignorance, prejudice or wilful misrepresentation. By pleasure we mean the absence of pain in the body and of trouble in the soul. It is not by an unbroken succession of drinking bouts and of revelry, not by sexual lust, nor the enjoyment of fish, and other delicacies of a luxurious table, which produce a pleasant life; it is sober reasoning, searching out the grounds of every choice and avoidance, and banishing those beliefs through which the greatest tumults take possession of the soul.[64]
The Epicurean meaning of life rejects immortality and mysticism; there is a soul, but it is as mortal as the body. There is no afterlife, yet, one need not fear death, because "Death is nothing to us; for that which is dissolved, is without sensation, and that which lacks sensation is nothing to us."[65]
Stoicism
Stoicism teaches that living according to reason and virtue is to be in harmony with the universe's divine order, entailed by one's recognition of the universal logos (reason), an essential value of all people. The meaning of life is freedom from suffering through apatheia (Gr: ???????), that is, being objective, having "clear judgement", not indifference.
Stoicism's prime directives are virtue, reason, and natural law, abided to develop personal self-control and mental fortitude as means of overcoming destructive emotions. The Stoic does not seek to extinguish emotions, only to avoid emotional troubles, by developing clear judgement and inner calm through diligently practiced logic, reflection, and concentration.
The Stoic ethical foundation is that good lies in the state of the soul, itself, exemplified in wisdom and self-control, thus improving one's spiritual well-being: "Virtue consists in a will which is in agreement with Nature."[65] The principle applies to one's personal relations thus: "to be free from anger, envy, and jealousy".[65]
Enlightenment philosophy
Further information: Enlightenment philosophy
The Enlightenment and the colonial era both changed the nature of European philosophy and exported it worldwide. Devotion and subservience to God were largely replaced by notions of inalienable natural rights and the potentialities of reason, and universal ideals of love and compassion gave way to civic notions of freedom, equality, and citizenship. The meaning of life changed as well, focussing less on humankind's relationship to God and more on the relationship between individuals and their society. This era is filled with theories that equate meaningful existence with the social order.
Classical liberalism
Classical liberalism is a set of ideas that arose in the 17th and 18th centuries, out of conflicts between a growing, wealthy, propertied class and the established aristocratic and religious orders that dominated Europe. Liberalism cast humans as beings with inalienable natural rights (including the right to retain the wealth generated by one's own work), and sought out means to balance rights across society. Broadly speaking, it considers individual liberty to be the most important goal,[66] because only through ensured liberty are the other inherent rights protected.
There are many forms and derivations of liberalism, but their central conceptions of the meaning of life trace back to three main ideas. Early thinkers such as John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith saw humankind beginning in the state of nature, then finding meaning for existence through labour and property, and using social contracts to create an environment that supports those efforts.
Kantianism
Immanuel Kant is regarded as one of the most influential thinkers of the late Enlightenment.
Kantianism is a philosophy based on the ethical, epistemological, and metaphysical works of Immanuel Kant. Kant is known for his deontological theory where there is a single moral obligation, the "Categorical Imperative", derived from the concept of duty. Kantians believe all actions are performed in accordance with some underlying maxim or principle, and for actions to be ethical, they must adhere to the categorical imperative.
Simply put, the test is that one must universalize the maxim (imagine that all people acted in this way) and then see if it would still be possible to perform the maxim in the world without contradiction. In Groundwork, Kant gives the example of a person who seeks to borrow money without intending to pay it back. This is a contradiction because if it were a universal action, no person would lend money anymore as he knows that he will never be paid back. The maxim of this action, says Kant, results in a contradiction in conceivability (and thus contradicts perfect duty).
Kant also denied that the consequences of an act in any way contribute to the moral worth of that act, his reasoning being that the physical world is outside one's full control and thus one cannot be held accountable for the events that occur in it.
19th century philosophy
Further information: 19th century philosophy
Utilitarianism
Jeremy Bentham
The origins of utilitarianism can be traced back as far as Epicurus, but, as a school of thought, it is credited to Jeremy Bentham,[67] who found that nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure, then, from that moral insight, deriving the Rule of Utility: that the good is whatever brings the greatest happiness to the greatest number of people. He defined the meaning of life as the "greatest happiness principle".
Jeremy Bentham's foremost proponent was James Mill, a significant philosopher in his day, and father of John Stuart Mill. The younger Mill was educated per Bentham's principles, including transcribing and summarising much of his father's work.[68]
Nihilism
Nihilism rejects any authority's claims to knowledge and truth, and so explores the significance of existence without knowable truth. Rather than insisting that values are subjective, and might be warrantless, the nihilist says: "Nothing is of value", morals are valueless, they only serve as society's false ideals.
Friedrich Nietzsche characterized nihilism as emptying the world, and especially human existence, of meaning, purpose, comprehensible truth, and essential value; succinctly, nihilism is the process of "the devaluing of the highest values".[69] Seeing the nihilist as a natural result of the idea that God is dead, and insisting it was something to overcome, his questioning of the nihilist's life-negating values, returned meaning to the Earth.[70]
The End of the World, by John Martin.
To Martin Heidegger, nihilism is the movement whereby "being" is forgotten, and is transformed into value, in other words, the reduction of being to exchange value.[69] Heidegger, in accordance with Nietzsche, saw in the so-called "death of God" a potential source for nihilism:
If God, as the supra-sensory ground and goal, of all reality, is dead; if the supra-sensory world of the Ideas has suffered the loss of its obligatory, and above it, its vitalizing and up-building power, then nothing more remains to which Man can cling, and by which he can orient himself.[71]
The French philosopher Albert Camus asserts that the absurdity of the human condition is that people search for external values and meaning in a world which has none, and is indifferent to them. Camus writes of value-nihilists such as Meursault,[72] but also of values in a nihilistic world, that people can instead strive to be "heroic nihilists", living with dignity in the face of absurdity, living with "secular saintliness", fraternal solidarity, and rebelling against and transcending the world's indifference.[73]
20th century philosophy
Further information: 20th century philosophy
The current era has seen radical changes in conceptions of human nature. Modern science has effectively rewritten the relationship of humankind to the natural world, advances in medicine and technology have freed us from the limitations and ailments of previous eras, and philosophy —particularly following the linguistic turn— altered how the relationships people have with themselves and each other is conceived. Questions about the meaning of life have seen equally radical changes, from attempts to reevaluate human existence in biological and scientific terms (as in pragmatism and logical positivism), to efforts to meta-theorize about meaning-making as an activity (existentialism, secular humanism).
Pragmatism
Pragmatism, originated in the late-nineteenth-century U.S., to concern itself (mostly) with truth, positing that only in struggling with the environment do data, and derived theories, have meaning, and that consequences, like utility and practicality, also are components of truth. Moreover, pragmatism posits that anything useful and practical is not always true, arguing that what most contributes to the most human good in the long course is true. In practice, theoretical claims must be practically verifiable, i.e. one should be able to predict and test claims, and, that, ultimately, the needs of mankind should guide human intellectual inquiry.
Pragmatic philosophers suggest that the practical, useful understanding of life is more important than searching for an impractical abstract truth about life. William James argued that truth could be made, but not sought.[74][75] To a pragmatist, the meaning of life is discoverable only via experience.
Existentialism
Main article: Meaning (existential)
Edvard Munch's The Scream, a representation of existential angst.
Each man and each woman creates the essence (meaning) of his and her life; life is not determined by a supernatural god or an earthly authority, one is free. As such, one's ethical prime directives are action, freedom, and decision, thus, existentialism opposes rationalism and positivism. In seeking meaning to life, the existentialist looks to where people find meaning in life, in course of which using only reason as a source of meaning is insufficient; the insufficiency gives rise to the emotions of anxiety and dread, felt in facing one's radical freedom, and the concomitant awareness of death. To the existentialist, existence precedes essence; the (essence) of one's life arises only after one comes to existence.
Søren Kierkegaard coined the term "leap of faith", arguing that life is full of absurdity, and one must make his and her own values in an indifferent world. One can live meaningfully (free of despair and anxiety) in an unconditional commitment to something finite, and devotes that meaningful life to the commitment, despite the vulnerability inherent to doing so.[76]
Arthur Schopenhauer answered: "What is the meaning of life?" by determining that one's life reflects one's will, and that the will (life) is an aimless, irrational, and painful drive. Salvation, deliverance, and escape from suffering are in aesthetic contemplation, sympathy for others, and asceticism.[77][78]
For Friedrich Nietzsche, life is worth living only if there are goals inspiring one to live. Accordingly, he saw nihilism ("all that happens is meaningless") as without goals. He discredited asceticism, because it denies one's living in the world; denied that values are objective facts, that are rationally necessary, universally-binding commitments: Our evaluations are interpretations, and not reflections of the world, as it is, in itself, and, therefore, all ideations take place from a particular perspective.[70]
Absurdism
Main article: Absurdism
"... in spite of or in defiance of the whole of existence he wills to be himself with it, to take it along, almost defying his torment. For to hope in the possibility of help, not to speak of help by virtue of the absurd, that for God all things are possible – no, that he will not do. And as for seeking help from any other – no, that he will not do for all the world; rather than seek help he would prefer to be himself – with all the tortures of hell, if so it must be."
Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death[79]
In absurdist philosophy, the Absurd arises out of the fundamental disharmony between the individual's search for meaning and the apparent meaninglessness of the universe. As beings looking for meaning in a meaningless world, humans have three ways of resolving the dilemma. Kierkegaard and Camus describe the solutions in their works, The Sickness Unto Death (1849) and The Myth of Sisyphus (1942):
Suicide (or, "escaping existence"): a solution in which a person simply ends one's own life. Both Kierkegaard and Camus dismiss the viability of this option.
Religious belief in a transcendent realm or being: a solution in which one believes in the existence of a reality that is beyond the Absurd, and, as such, has meaning. Kierkegaard stated that a belief in anything beyond the Absurd requires a non-rational but perhaps necessary religious acceptance in such an intangible and empirically unprovable thing (now commonly referred to as a "leap of faith"). However, Camus regarded this solution as "philosophical suicide".
Acceptance of the Absurd: a solution in which one accepts and even embraces the Absurd and continues to live in spite of it. Camus endorsed this solution, while Kierkegaard regarded this solution as "demoniac madness": "He rages most of all at the thought that eternity might get it into its head to take his misery from him!"[80]
Secular humanism
Further information: Secular Humanism and Humanism (life stance)
The "Happy Human" symbol representing Secular Humanism.
Per secular humanism, the human race came to be by reproducing in a progression of unguided evolution as an integral part of nature, which is self-existing.[81][82] Knowledge does not come from supernatural sources, but from human observation, experimentation, and rational analysis (the scientific method): the nature of the universe is what people discern it to be.[81] Like-wise, "values and realities" are determined "by means of intelligent inquiry"[81] and "are derived from human need and interest as tested by experience", that is, by critical intelligence.[83][84] "As far as we know, the total personality is [a function] of the biological organism transacting in a social and cultural context."[82]
People determine human purpose, without supernatural influence; it is the human personality (general sense) that is the purpose of a human being's life; humanism seeks to develop and fulfill:[81] "Humanism affirms our ability, and responsibility, to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that aspire to the greater good of humanity".[83] Humanism aims to promote enlightened self-interest and the common good for all people. It is based on the premises that the happiness of the individual person is inextricably linked to the well-being of humanity, as a whole, in part, because humans are social animals, who find meaning in personal relations, and because cultural progress benefits everybody living in the culture.[82][83]
Daniel
09-04-2010, 01:31 AM
Theoretical physicists today still use a core technology that was developed in the 18th century out of the calculus pioneered by Isaac Newton and Gottfried von Leibniz.
Isaac Newton derived his three Laws of Motion through close, almost obsessive observation and experimentation, as well as mathematical reasoning. The relationship he discovered between force and acceleration, which he expressed in his own arcane notation of fluxions, has had the most impact on the world in the differential notation used by his professional rival, Wilhelm von Leibniz, as the familiar differential equation from freshman physics:
After Newton accused Leibniz of plagiarism in the discovery of calculus, Leibniz' vastly more convenient and intuitive differential and integral notation failed to become popular in England, and so the majority of advances in the development of calculus in the next century took place in France and Germany.
At the University of Basel, the multitalented Leonhard Euler began to develop the calculus of variations that was to become the most important tool in the tool kit of the theoretical physicist. The calculus of variations was useful for finding curves that were the maximal or minimal length given some set of conditions.
Joseph-Louis Lagrange took Euler's results and applied them to Newtonian mechanics. The general principle that emerged from the work of Euler and Lagrange is now called the Principle of Least Action, which could be called the core technology of modern theoretical physics.
In the Principal of Least Action, the differential equations of motion of a given physical system are derived by minimizing the action of the system in question. For a finite system of objects, the action S is an integral over time of a function called the Lagrange function or Lagrangian L(q, dq/dt), which depends on the set of generalized coordinates and velocities (q, dq/dt) of the system in question.
The differential equations that describe the motion of the system are found by demanding that the action be at its minimum (or maximum) value, where the functional differential of the action vanishes:
This condition gives rise to the Euler-Lagrange equations
which, when applied to the Lagrangian of the system in question, gives the equations of motion for the system.
As an example, take the system of a single massive particle with space coordinate x (in zero gravity). The Lagrangian is just the kinetic energy, and the action is the energy integrated over time:
The Euler-Lagrange equations that minimize the action just reproduce Newton's equation of motion for a free particle with no external forces:
The set of mathematical methods described above are collectively known as the Lagrangian formalism of mechanics. In 1834, Dublin mathematician William Rowan Hamilton applied his work on characteristic functions in optics to Newtonian mechanics, and what is now called the Hamiltonian formalism of mechanics was born.
The idea that Hamilton borrowed from optics was the concept of a function whose value remains constant along any path in the configuration space of the system, unless the final and initial points are varied. This function in mechanics is now called the Hamiltonian and represents the total energy of the system. The Hamiltonian formalism is related to the Lagrangian formalism by a transformation, called a Legendre transformation, from coordinates and velocities (q, dq/dt) to coordinates and momenta (q,p):
The equations of motions are derived from the Hamiltonian through the Hamiltonian equivalent of the Euler-Lagrange equations:
For a massive particle in zero gravity moving in one dimension, the Hamiltonian is just the kinetic energy, which in terms of momentum, not velocity, is just:
If the coordinate q is just the position of the particle along the x axis then the equations of motion become:
which is equivalent to the answer derived from the Lagrangian formalism.
Classical mechanics would have had a brief history if only the motion of finite objects such as cannonballs and planets could be studied. But the Lagrangian formalism and the method of differential equations proved well adaptable to the study of continuous media, including the flows of fluids and vibrations of continuous n-dimensional objects such as one-dimensional strings and two-dimensional membranes.
The Lagrangian formalism is extended to continuous systems by the use of a Lagrangian density integrated over time and the D-dimensional spatial volume of the system, instead of a Lagrange function integrated just over time. The generalized coordinates q are now the fields q(x) distributed over space, and we have made a transition from classical mechanics to classical field theory. The action is now written:
Here the coordinate xa refers to both time and space, and repetition implies a sum over all D+1 dimensions of space and time.
For continuous media the Euler-Lagrange equations become
with functional differentiation of the Lagrange density replacing ordinary differentiation of the Lagrange function.
What is the meaning of the abstract symbol q(x)? This type of function in physics that depends on space and time is called a field, and the physics of fields is called, of course, field theory.
The first important classical field theory was Newton's Law of Gravitation, where the gravitational force between two particles of masses m1 and m2 can be written as:
The gravitation force F can be seen as deriving from a gravitational field G, which if we set x1=0 and x2=x, can be written as:
Newton's Law of Gravitation was the beginning of classical field theory. But the greatest achievement of classical field theory came 200 years later and gave birth to the modern era of telecommunications.
Physicists and mathematicians in the 19th century were intensely occupied with understanding electricity and magnetism. In the late 19th century, James Clerk Maxwell found unified equations of motion of the electric and magnetic fields, now known as Maxwell's equations. The Maxwell equations in the absence of any charges or currents are:
Maxwell discovered that there exist electromagnetic traveling wave solutions to these equations, which can be rewritten as
and in 1873 he postulated that these electromagnetic waves solved the ongoing question as to the nature of light.
The greatest year in classical field theory came in 1884 when Heinrich Hertz generated and studied the first radio waves in his laboratory. Hertz confirmed Maxwell's prediction and changed the world, and physics, forever.
Maxwell's theoretical unification of electricity and magnetism was engineered into the modern human power to communicate across space at the speed of light. This was a stunning and powerful achievement for theporetical physics, one that shaped the face of coming 20th century as the century of global telecommunications.
But this was just the beginning. In the century that was just arriving, the power of theoretical physics would grow to question the very nature of reality, space and time, and the technological consequences would be even bigger.
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