Reading list

-
Recently, I've been geeking out alot on Amazon, looking for non-library material to fill my dissertation hit list. As I receive each of these books, I'll talk about them here. What I am happy about, most recently, is that I finally found a compromise for my dissertation: I get to, somewhat, write about what interests me, while conforming to the strictures of my discipline and the dissertation. But the challenge ahead remains. Now I have to write that first chapter,  compile a bibliography (that I will add to over here), and also expand that proposal outline into a fleshy prospectus.

This Monday, I found an English translation to L Mandelstamm and Ig Tamm article on "The Uncertainty Relation Between Energy and Time in Non-Relativistic Quantum Mechanics." It was in a bound volume of the Russian Journal of Physics that Duke Library happens to have. What brought about that interest? Well, it has to do somewhat with quantum fluctuations and semi-classical mechanics.

Yesterday, I found some interesting references to speculative physics in Romantic philosophy. Now I have a specific journal to look up even if my reading German is still relatively crap.

Also, now that Lynn Margulis has passed on, my desire to read her books have increased. Probably bring one on a trip with me to DC. Oh yes, DC...time to geek out planning out all the books I'll like to atttack there.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Queering physics - musing part I

-
It has been a busy past two months of constant writing, seminar presentation, travelling and finally, starting on a new summer job as a TA for a general physics course. A recent paper I submitted earlier this month on the topic of feminism, 'hard' science, feminist science fiction, and queerness, got me thinking about the notion of queerness in physics, and whether it is possible to think about queer physics. So far, none of the feminist epistemology of science essays I had read have quite pointed me towards that direction, so I need to think about this further. Nevertheless, my early postulate is that queer physics speaks about knowledge-making in physics that takes the form of subverting the hegemony of a dominant and mainstream discourse. It also interrogates the point of physics knowledge that have been marginalized or discarded, and query on what constitute the parameters of legitimacy governing their acceptance. It is possible that one can consider queer physics to on...
Read on >>

ArtScientist/ScienceArtist: Finding a Creative-Intellectual Room of One's Own

-
UPDATE Dec 21, 2016 There is an issue by Interdisciplinary Science Reviews dedicated to the delineation of the two cultures problem that non-academics and academics from poorly provisioned institutions will not be able to access. When I get to reading the issue, I will do a separate post on the debates in another blog post. This will be filed under the label of "artscience/scienceart" as part of all the projects that will fall under the rubric; I will post updates on the projects in this blog. UPDATE Dec 20, 2016 The post also appears here . ----------------------------- Here's another holiday read recommendation Sandy's Circus: A Story of Alexander Calder . I discovered this book when I visited a small exhibit of Calder's work at the Nasher Museum (part of Duke University) back in 2014.   -------------------------- Now that I am going from full-time vacation to half-time in the week leading up to Christmas, the start of the second week of vacation c...
Read on >>

Speculative Physics according to Friedrich WJ Schelling

-
These notes are my attempts at making sense of how the notion of speculation and physics are played out in 18th century Europe, through an actual attempt to address the concept in Schelling'S work that partially approximates the constructs of science today. More on how I intend to transfer what he does here to our understanding of modern quantum theory later, probably in the outline of my talk. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------   Introduction to the Outlines of a System of Natural Philosophy: or, On the Idea of Speculative Physics and the Internal Organization of a System of this Science Transcendental philosophy subordinates the Real to the Ideal, while Natural Philosophy explain the Ideal by the Real. Two sciences as one science Is also a critique of the dynamical system of Kant The possibilities of speculative physics lie in: 1. Having sufficient knowledge of an object's working principles. ...
Read on >>