In this insightful work, Martin H. Krieger shows what physicists are really doing when they employ mathematical models as research tools. He argues that the technical details of these complex calculations serve not only as a means to an end, but also reveal key aspects of the physical properties they model. Krieger's lucid discussions will help readers to appreciate the larger physical issues behind the mathematical detail of modern physics and gain deeper insights into how theoretical physicists work. Constitutions of Matter is a rare, behind-the-scenes glimpse into the world of modern physics. "[Krieger] provides students of physics and applied mathematics with a view of the physical forest behind the mathematical trees, historians and philosophers of science with insights into how theoretical physicists go about their work, and technically advanced general readers with a glimpse into the discipline."—Scitech Book News

Constitutions of Matter: Mathematically Modeling the Most Everyday of Physical Phenomena (Cinema and Modernity (Hardcover))

Science & Math

Krieger, Martin H.

Physics

University of Chicago Press

Constitutions of Matter: Mathematically Modeling the Most Everyday of Physical Phenomena

Doing Physics makes concepts of physics easier to grasp by relating them to everyday knowledge. Addressing some of the models and metaphors that physicists use to explain the physical world, Martin H. Krieger describes the conceptual world of physics by means of analogies to economics, anthropology, theater, carpentry, mechanisms such as clockworks, and machine tool design. The interaction of elementary particles or chemical species, for example, can be related to the theory of kinship―who can marry whom is like what can interact with what. Likewise, the description of physical situations in terms of interdependent particles and fields is analogous to the design of a factory with its division of labor among specialists. For the new edition, Krieger has revised the text and added a chapter on the role of mathematics and formal models in physics. Doing Physics will be of special interest to economists, political theorists, anthropologists, and sociologists as well as philosophers of science.

Doing Physics, Second Edition: How Physicists Take Hold of the World

History & Philosophy

Indiana University Press

Doing Physics: How Physicists Take Hold of the World

The product of a lifetime of experience in American universities, The Scholar’s Survival Manual offers advice for students, professors, and administrators on how to get work done, the path to becoming a professor, getting tenured, and making visible contributions to scholarship, as well as serving on promotion and tenure committees. Martin H. Krieger covers a broad cross section of the academic experience from a graduate student's first foray into the job market through retirement. Because advice is notoriously difficult to take and context matters a great deal, Krieger has allowed his ideas to percolate through dozens of discussions. Some of the advice is instrumental, matters of expediency; some demands our highest aspirations. Readers may open the book at any place and begin reading; for the more systematic there is a detailed table of contents. Krieger’s tone is direct, an approach born of the knowledge that students and professors too often ignore suggestions that would have prevented them from becoming academic roadkill. This essential book will help readers sidestep a similar fate.

The Scholar's Survival Manual: A Road Map for Students, Faculty, and Administrators

Education & Teaching

Higher & Continuing Education

The product of a lifetime of experience in American universities, The Scholar’s Survival Manual offers advice for students, professors, and administrators on how to get work done, the path to becoming a professor, getting tenured, and making visible contributions to scholarship, as well as serving on promotion and tenure committees. Martin H. Krieger covers a broad cross section of the academic experience from a graduate student's first foray into the job market through retirement. Because advice is notoriously difficult to take and context matters a great deal, Krieger has allowed his ideas to percolate through dozens of discussions. Some of the advice is instrumental, matters of expediency; some demands our highest aspirations. Readers may open the book at any place and begin reading; for the more systematic there is a detailed table of contents. Krieger’s tone is direct, an approach born of the knowledge that students and professors too often ignore suggestions that would have prevented them from becoming academic roadkill. This essential book will help readers sidestep a similar fate.

"This is a mind-altering book—it ought to carry some sort of warning, that you will never be the same again once you have read it.... This is an important and provocative book, timely and full of insight. Fail to read it, and you may miss out on the physics of the future." —John Gribbin, New Scientist
"Krieger... excellently tells those in our human society outside the physics world how physicists think, plan, and go about understanding nature." —Choice
"... an excellent book... innovative." —Isis
"Krieger takes us into the world of the physicist, on a theoretically informed anthropological field trip."Â —Contemporary Sociology
Krieger describes the ways physicists actually do their work, their motives, and their ways of making sense of the world so that outsiders can understand it. He focuses on the "factory" of Nature; the analysis of the world as a clockworks of comparatively dumb parts; a set of kinship rules that govern families of particles; the setting of a simple stage, a vacuum, on which something arises out of nothing; and the items that make up a physicist’s tool kit.

This book is a cultural phenomenology of doing physics. It describes the ways physicists actually do their work--their motives, and their ways of making sense of the world--so that outsiders can understand it. Martin H. Krieger explains that physicists employ a small number of everyday notions to get at the world experimentally and conceptually. Krieger's stories focus on five of these models: the division of labor among particles, fields, and spacetime in the ""factory"" of Nature; the analysis of the world as a clockworks of comparatively dumb parts whose composition is often surprisingly complex and rich; the play of freedom and necessity given by a set of kinship rules that govern the families of particles; the setting of a simple stage, a vacuum, on which something arises out of nothing; and a mode of grasping the world with the handles, probes, and tools that make up a physicist's tool kit. In each case, Krieger shows that the deepest principles of physics are embodied in the physicist's craft and conventions.

Originally Published by Scholars PressNow Available from Duke University PressIn this interdisciplinary work, Martin H. Krieger examines the entrepeneur in terms of modes and ideal figures drawn from religion and classical studies. In so doing, he provides a means or vocabulary with which entrepreneurs can articulate their experience of risk, commitment, and judgment. In addition, by establishing a comparison between the entrepreneur and the figures he utilizes from religious and classical literature, Krieger generates surprising new ways to look at the careers of such traditional figures as St. Augustine, Moses, Oedipus, Antigone, and the characters of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Both an exercise in the humanities and in the pragmatic world of business, Krieger’s work offers an intriguing methodology for how humanistic learning can be applied to the real world concerns of the entrepreneur. A teaching and self-study guide to Entrepreneurial Vocation is included as an appendix for those wishing to adopt the text as a classroom resource.

Entrepreneurial Vocations: Learning from the Callings of Augustine, Moses, Mothers, Antigone, Oedipus, and Prospero (SCHOLAR'S PRESS STUDIES IN THE HUMANITIES SERIES)

Business & Money

Economics

Duke University Press Books

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Krieger, Martin H.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Krieger, Martin H.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Krieger, Martin H.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Constitutions of Matter: Mathematically Modeling the Most Everyday of Physical Phenomena (Cinema and Modernity (Hardcover))

Constitutions of Matter: Mathematically Modeling the Most Everyday of Physical Phenomena

Doing Physics, Second Edition: How Physicists Take Hold of the World

Doing Physics: How Physicists Take Hold of the World

The Scholar's Survival Manual: A Road Map for Students, Faculty, and Administrators

The Scholar's Survival Manual: A Road Map for Students, Faculty, and Administrators

Doing Physics, Second Edition: How Physicists Take Hold of the World

Doing Physics: How Physicists Take Hold of the World

Entrepreneurial Vocations: Learning from the Callings of Augustine, Moses, Mothers, Antigone, Oedipus, and Prospero (SCHOLAR'S PRESS STUDIES IN THE HUMANITIES SERIES)

Entrepreneurial Vocations: Learning from the Callings of Augustine, Moses, Mothers, Antigone, Oedipus, and Prospero (SCHOLAR'S PRESS STUDIES IN THE HUMANITIES SERIES)