Physical Sciences and the Language of War: Science and Society

Modern science has changed every aspect of life in ways that cannot be compared to developments of previous eras. This four volume set presents key developments within modern physical science and the effects of these discoveries on modern global life. The first two volumes explore the history of the concept of relativity, the cultural roots of science, the concept of time and gravity before, during, and after Einstein's theory, and the cultural reception of relativity. Volume three explores the impact of modern science upon global politics and the creation of a new kind of war, and Volume four details the old and new efforts surrounding the elucidation of the quantum world, as well as the cultural impact of particle physics. The collection also presents the historical and cultural context that made these scientific innovations possible. The transformation of everyday concepts of time and space for the individual and for society, the conduct of warfare, and the modern sense of mastering nature are all issues discussed in these four volumes. The thematically organized volumes in this collection reprint in facsimile the most influential scholarship published in this field.

Table of Contents:
Fortun, Michael and Sylvan S. Schweber. Scientists and the State: The Legacy of World War II. In Kostas Gavroglu, Jean Christianidis, and Efthymios Nicolaidis, eds., Trends in the Historiography of Science (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994). Hales, Peter Bacon. Construction. In Atomic Spaces: Living on the Manhattan Project (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1997). Hoddeson, Lillian. Mission Change in the Large Laboratory: The Los Alamos Implosion Program, 1943-1945. In Peter Galison and Bruce Hevly, eds., The Growth of Large-Scale Research (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992). Easlea, Brian. The Fathering of the Monster: The Manhattan Project. In Fathering the Unthinkable: Masculinity, Scientists and the Nuclear Arms Race (London, UK: Pluto Press, 1983). Price, Matt. Roots of Dissent: The Chicago Met Lab and the Origins of the Franck Report. Isis 86 (1995). Galison, Peter. The Ontology of the Enemy: Norbert Wiener and the Cybernetic Vision. Critical Inquiry 21 (1994). Forman, Paul. Behind Quantum Electronics: National Security as Basis for Physical Research in the United States, 1940-1960. Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 18 (1987). MacKenzie, Donald. The Construction of Technical Facts. In Inventing Accuracy: A Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990). Gusterson, Hugh. Nuclear Weapons Testing: Scientific Experiment as Political Ritual. In Laura Nader, ed., Naked Science: Anthropological Inquiry into Boundaries, Power, and Knowledge (New York, NY: Routledge, 1996). Kevles, Daniel J. Preface, 1995: The Death of the Superconducting Super Collider in the Life of American Physics. In The Physicists: The History of a Scientific Community in Modern America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971).

About the Author :
Peter Galison is Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University and a premier authority in the field. In 1997, he was named a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellow; in 1999, he was a winner of the Max Planck Prize given by the Max Planck Gesellschaft and Humboldt Stiftung. His is author of numerous works, including, most recently, Picturing Science, ProducingArt (Routledge, 1998) and The Architecture of Science (MIT, 1999). Michael Gordin and David Kaiser are both at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.