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The Swings of Science

From Complexity to Simplicity and Back

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  • © 2018

Overview

Authors:
  1. Len Pismen

    1. Department of Chemical Engineering, Technion Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel

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  • Provides an unconventional, personal and entertaining account of the emergence of modern physics, in particular complexity science
  • Includes autobiographical elements and personal reminiscences
  • Puts the development of science into a social context

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Table of contents (10 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-viii
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  2. Swings Through the Ages

    • Len Pismen
    Pages 1-23

  3. Continuum Mechanics

    • Len Pismen
    Pages 25-40

  4. Continuum Beyond Mechanics

    • Len Pismen
    Pages 41-58

  5. From Continuum to Atoms

    • Len Pismen
    Pages 59-72

  6. Condensed Matter

    • Len Pismen
    Pages 73-88

  7. Quantum Matter

    • Len Pismen
    Pages 89-108

  8. Broken Symmetry

    • Len Pismen
    Pages 109-122

  9. Complexity Simplified

    • Len Pismen
    Pages 123-134

  10. Complexity Strikes Back

    • Len Pismen
    Pages 135-160

  11. Quo Vadis?

    • Len Pismen
    Pages 161-174

  12. Back Matter

    Pages 175-190
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Keywords

About this book

This book is a personal account of some aspects of the emergence of modern science, mostly from the viewpoint of those branches of physics which provided the much needed paradigm shift of "more is different" that heralded the advent of complexity science as an antidote to the purely reductionist approach in fundamental physics. It is also about the humans that have helped to shape these developments, including personal reminiscences and the realization that the so-called exact sciences are inevitably also a social endeavour with all its facets.

Served by the razor-sharp wit of the author, this erudite ramble is meant to be neither comprehensive nor systematic, but its generous insights will give the inquisitive academically trained mind a better understanding of what science, and physics in particular, could or should be about.

Authors and Affiliations

  • Department of Chemical Engineering, Technion Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel

    Len Pismen

About the author

Len Pismen is professor emeritus at Israel Institute of Technology where he held the Julius M. and Bernice Naiman Chair in Fluid Mechanics.
He has published two monographs - Vortices in Nonlinear Fields: From liquid crystals to superfluids, From non-equilibrium patterns to cosmic strings (Oxford University Press, 1999), Patterns and Interfaces in Dissipative Dynamics (Springer, 2006) - and is member of the editorial board of The European Physical Journal Special Topics .

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