{"product_id":"more-than-nothing-a-history-of-the-vacuum-in-theoretical-physics-1925-1980-9780190062804","title":"More Than Nothing: A History of the Vacuum in Theoretical Physics, 1925-1980","description":"The vacuum is central to physicists' best theories of subatomic particles, gravitation, and cosmology. Nothingness provides the reference point with which to compare new particle creation and annihilation. Cosmologists use empty universes to study the causal structure of spacetime. Paradoxically, our best physical theories of particles, gravity, and spacetime are theories of nothingness. Stranger still, the physicists' vacuum is a hive of activity. Quantum fluctuations fill empty space with particles, and astronomers measure gravitational waves, the vibrations of empty spacetime itself. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cem\u003eMore than Nothing \u003c\/em\u003euses the history of the vacuum to show how technical concepts in physics are made real through everyday practice. It provides new insight into the development of twentieth-century theoretical physics through sustained analysis of understudied figures including John Wheeler's geometrodynamics and Sidney Coleman's false vacuum. It reveals the surprising influence on physicists from the psychology of impossible objects to drawings of the black hole, and the ways in which the development of the physics of the vacuum became inseparable from the development of larger cultural movements in aesthetics, art, psychology, and fiction. Across decades and across disciplines, \u003cem\u003eMore than Nothing \u003c\/em\u003eshows how physicists over and again chose to study the vacuum for insight into the world around them. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eDrawing on newly unearthed laboratory notes, private letters, and published material, \u003cem\u003eMore than Nothing\u003c\/em\u003e offers a scoping history of the vacuum as a lens into the development of modern physics.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAaron Sidney Wright, PhD\u003c\/strong\u003e, is Assistant Professor of History at Dalhousie University and the University of King's College in Kjipuktuk, Mi'kma'ki (Halifax, Nova Scotia). He has held postdoctoral fellowships in the Department of History of Science at Harvard University and in the Suppes Center for History and Philosophy of Science at Stanford University.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Oxford University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50867707314450,"sku":"9780190062804","price":130.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_96405991-36a3-4232-83f9-d5182802ca4e.jpg?v=1737702900","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/more-than-nothing-a-history-of-the-vacuum-in-theoretical-physics-1925-1980-9780190062804","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}