Physics, the Human Adventure: From Copernicus to Einstein and Beyond

by Stephen G. Brush, Gerald Holton

Winner of the 2001 Joseph Hazen Education Prize of the History of Science Society​

Physics, the Human Adventure is the third edition of the classic text Introduction to Concepts and Theories in Physical Science . Authored by Gerald Holton, the text was a landmark in science education. It was the first modern textbook in physics (or in any other science) to make full and effective use of the history and philosophy of science in presenting for both the general and the science-oriented student an account of the nature of physical science. A second edition, prepared by Stephen G. Brush, brought the book up to date by increasing the coverage of topics in modern physics and by taking account of recent scholarly research in the history of science. 

In the new book Physics, The Human Adventure , each of the chapters has been reworked to further clarify the physics concepts and to incorporate recent physical advances and research. The book shows the unifying power of science by bringing in connections to chemistry, astronomy, and geoscience. In short, the aid of the new edition is to teach good physics while presenting physical science as a human adventure that has become a major force in our civilization.

New chapters discuss theories of the origin of the solar system and the expanding universe; fission, fusion, and the Big Bang–Steady State Controversy; and thematic elements and styles in scientific thought. New topics • Theories of does the eye send out rays or receive them? • Distances in the solar system • The prediction of the return of Halley’s comet and analysis of deviations from Kepler’s laws • Angular momentum conservation and Laplace’s nebular hypothesis • Relation between symmetries and conservation Emmy Noether’s theorem • First estimates of atomic sizes • Consequences of the indistinguishability of elementary particles of the same kind • Applications of quantum mechanics to many-particle systems • Dirac’s prediction of anti-matter • The anthropic principle and other controversial issues on the frontiers of research

Genres: Science, Textbooks, Physics

598 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2001

About the author

A scholar in the history of science, Stephen George Brush earned his BS in physics at Harvard University and his D.Phil. at Oxford University. After a year as a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at Imperial College London, Brush worked as a physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California in the area of statistical mechanics from 1959 until 1965. He was a lecturer in Physics at Harvard University from 1965 until 1968, and a historian of science at the University of Maryland, College Park from 1968 until his retirement as Distinguished Professor of the History of Science in 2007.

Reviews

[Xander · Rating 4 out of 5]

Last year I read Introduction to Theories and Concepts in Physical Science (1985) by Holton & Brush. At the time I was looking for a general introduction to physics. By accident I found out that in 2001 a third edition of the same book was published under a new title, Physics, the Human Adventure. Because I was impressed by the clarity and conciseness of the original, I decided to check out the new edition.

This new edition is practically the same as the old one; the authors slightly revised the first 30 chapters and added some extra information (only minimal though). In addition to the original chapters, three new chapters have been added: one on cosmology, one on nuclear physics and one on general scientific theories. These three chapters are all crammed into the last part of the book. The book feels more complete and up to date, but it also feels like 'just' the old book with some extra paragraphs attached to it.

So even though the new information is interesting, it isn't really a different book. For a new edition (after 30 years) this is really disappointing. But overall it remains a concise and accessible introduction to a very interesting field; I recommend this edition over the old ones.

[Teacherhuman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A magnificent work! Challenging indeed for those of us who are not science and math scholars, but pushing through with some resource materials, I truly value having read this book... I will bring the history and science to the literature I teach this year!