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.

Contents:
Einstein, Albert. 'On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies.' In Albert Einsteins Special Theory of Relativity: Emergence (1905) and Early Interpretation (1905-1911), translated by Arthur I. Miller (Reading, PA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1981)

Holton, Gerald. 'Mach, Einstein, and the Search for Reality'. In Gerald Holton, ed., Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought: Kepler to Einstein, rev. ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988).

Holton, Gerald. 'Einstein and the Cultural Roots of Modern Science' Daedalus 127 (Winter 1998).

Darrigol, Oliver. 'Henri Poincaré's Criticism of Fin-de-siecle Electrodynamics'. Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 26 (1995).

Janssen, Michel. 'Reconsidering a Scientific Revolution: The Case of Einstein Versus Lorentz.' Unpublished.

Miller, Arthur I. 'The Special Relativity Theory: Einstein's Response to the Physics of 1905'. In Gerald Holton and Yehudah Elkana, eds., Albert Einstein: Historical and Cultural Perspectives (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982).

Galison, Peter. 'Einstein's Clocks: The Place of Time'. Critical Enquiry 26 (Winter 2000).

Cassidy, David. 'Understanding the History of Special Relativity'. Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 16 (1986)

Pyenson, Lewis. 'The Relativity Revolution in Germany.' In The Comparitive Reception of Relativity (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1987).

Glick, Thomas. 'Cultural Issues in the Reception of Relativity (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1987)

Goldberg, Stanley. 'In Defense of the Ether: The British Response to Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, 1905-1911.' Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 2 (1970).

Warwick, Andrew. 'Cambridge Mathematics and Cavendish Physics: Cunningham, Campbell, and Einstein's Relativity, 1905-1911. Part I: The Uses of Theory.' Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 23 (1992).

Contents:
Kuhn, Thomas. 'Revisiting Planck.' Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 14 (1984).

Klein, Martin. 'Thermodynamics in Einstein's Thought.' Science 157 (1967).

Klein, Martin. 'Einstein, Specific Heats, and the Early Quantum Theory.' Science 148 (1965).

Darrigol, Olivier. 'Classsical Concepts in Bohr's Atomic Theory (1913-1925).' Physis 32 (1997).

MacKinnon, Edward. 'Heisenberg, Models, and the Rise of Matrix Mechanics.' Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 8 (1977).

Wessels, Linda. 'Schrodinger's Route to Wave Mechanics.' Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 10 (1977).

Cassidy, David. 'Heisenberg, Uncertainty, and the Quantum Revolution.' Scientific American 266 (May 1992).

Kragh, Helge. 'The Genesis of Dirac's Relativistic Theory of Electrons.' Archive for History of Exact Sciences 24 (1981).

Forman, Paul. 'Weimar Culture, Causality, and Quantum Theory, 1918-1927: Adaptation by German Physicists and Mathematicians to a Hostile Intellectual Environment.' In Colin Chant and John Fauvel, eds., Darwin to Einstein: Historical Studies on Science and Belief (New York, NY: Longman, 1980).

Beller, Mara. 'Born's Probabilistic Interpretation: A Case Study of 'Concepts in Flux''. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 21 (1990).

Holton, Gerald. 'The Roots of Complementarity.' Daedalus 99 (1970).

Heilbron, John. 'The Earliest Missionaries of the Copenhagen Spirit.' Revue d'Histoire des Sciences 38 (1985).

Wise, M. Norton. 'Pascual Jordan: Quantum Mechanics, Psychology, National Socialism.' In Mark Walker and Monika Rechenberg, eds., Science, Technology, and National Socialism. (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

Fine, Arthur. 'Einstein's Critique of Quantum Theory: The Roots and Significance of EPR.' In P. Barker and C.G. Shugart, eds., After Einstein (Memphis, TN: Memphis State University Press, 1981).

Assmus, Alexi. 'The Americanization of Molecular Physics.' Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 23 (1992).

In the United States at the height of the Cold War, roughly between the end of World War II and the early 1980s, a new project of redefining rationality commanded the attention of sharp minds, powerful politicians, wealthy foundations, and top military brass. Its home was the human sciences—psychology, sociology, political science, and economics, among others—and its participants enlisted in an intellectual campaign to figure out what rationality should mean and how it could be deployed. How Reason Almost Lost Its Mind brings to life the people—Herbert Simon, Oskar Morgenstern, Herman Kahn, Anatol Rapoport, Thomas Schelling, and many others—and places, including the RAND Corporation, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the Cowles Commission for Research and Economics, and the Council on Foreign Relations, that played a key role in putting forth a \u201cCold War rationality.\u201d Decision makers harnessed this picture of rationality—optimizing, formal, algorithmic, and mechanical—in their quest to understand phenomena as diverse as economic transactions, biological evolution, political elections, international relations, and military strategy. The authors chronicle and illuminate what it meant to be rational in the age of nuclear brinkmanship.

Today, the language of science is English. But the dominance of this particular language is a relatively recent phenomenon - and far from a foregone conclusion. In a sweeping history that takes us from antiquity to the modern day, Michael D. Gordin untangles the web of politics, money, personality and international conflict that created the monoglot world of science we now inhabit. Beginning with the rise of Latin, Gordin reveals how we went on to use (and then lose) Dutch, Italian, Swedish and many other languages on the way, and sheds light on just how significant language is in the nationalistic realm of science - just one word mistranslated into German from Russian triggered an inflammatory face-off between the two countries for the credit of having discovered the periodic table. Intelligent, revealing and full of compelling stories, Scientific Babel shows how the world has shaped science just as much as science has transformed the world.

In the United States at the height of the Cold War, roughly between the end of World War II and the early 1980s, a new project of redefining rationality commanded the attention of sharp minds, powerful politicians, wealthy foundations, and top military brass. Its home was the human sciences - psychology, sociology, political science, and economics, among others - and its participants enlisted in an intellectual campaign to figure out what rationality should mean and how it could be deployed. How Reason Almost Lost Its Mind brings to life the people - Herbert Simon, Oskar Morgenstern, Herman Kahn, Anatol Rapoport, Thomas Schelling, and many others - and places, including the RAND Corporation, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the Cowles Commission for Research and Economics, and the Council on Foreign Relations, that played a key role in putting forth a "Cold War rationality." Decision makers harnessed this picture of rationality - optimizing, formal, algorithmic, and mechanical - in their quest to understand phenomena as diverse as economic transactions, biological evolution, political elections, international relations, and military strategy. The authors chronicle and illuminate what it meant to be rational in the age of nuclear brinkmanship.