What do you think?
Rate this book
Constructing Quarks: A Sociological History of Particle Physics
Widely regarded as a classic in its field, Constructing Quarks recounts the history of the post-war conceptual development of elementary-particle physics. Inviting a reappraisal of the status of scientific knowledge, Andrew Pickering suggests that scientists are not mere passive observers and reporters of nature. Rather they are social beings as well as active constructors of natural phenomena who engage in both experimental and theoretical practice.
"A prodigious piece of scholarship that I can heartily recommend."—Michael Riordan, New Scientist
"An admirable history. . . . Detailed and so accurate."—Hugh N. Pendleton, Physics Today
"A prodigious piece of scholarship that I can heartily recommend."—Michael Riordan, New Scientist
"An admirable history. . . . Detailed and so accurate."—Hugh N. Pendleton, Physics Today
475 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 1984
7 people are currently reading
186 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
November 20, 2018
I really enjoyed the book as a more detailed insight into particle physics history. if I understood Pickering correctly, this book is meant to be read also by people with no specific science/physics background. However, I think this is hardly possible IMO due to the long passages that require knowledge of physical concepts that were only introduced briefly. Coming from a particle physics background, this was ok, but I think he fails his promise to be suitable for a general audience and I therefore give 4 stars!
February 15, 2014
Pickering is unsatisfying on a lot of levels. While the history of particle physics is fairly good (I say "fairly" because there are some problematic parts, like the roles of particle accelerators and theoretical models, that play an important, but often poorly specified, role in the story) the book is rough because of what it expects of its readers and the development of some of the abstract framework presented in the early chapters.
Like the seminal "Leviathan and the Air-Pump," there are some claims in the book regarding the epistemology of science that are hugely controversial; unlike Leviathan, Pickering just takes them to be established by some very rudimentary theoretical work in the first chapter and doesn't attempt to illustrate them at any length throughout the discussion. While Leviathan's claims, I think, turn out to be unsuccessful, [see Boghossian's "Fear of Knowledge" and Parson's "Drawing out Leviathan" for a survey of that debate] the problem with Pickering's book isn't just that it stakes its territory on those controversial claims, but that it does not even turn out to be consistent with them, venturing far from the philosophical framework in the historical and anthropological project.
More frustrating is the often whiplash inducing transitions between very basic introductions to the sociological state of physics during the 50s-90s to incredibly technical discussions of the physics themselves. The book is supposed to be, in part, written for historians and anthropologists of science, and it seems implausible than anyone without a serious physics background could follow the technical sections; this seems to just be a technical issue with the writing, except that it stands in the way of understanding the complex conceptual change. Further, an inability to follow the heavily theoretical sections leaves many of Pickering's readers (especially those who recommended the book to me) with the impression that his account is principally about material and technological change in science, when the book spends an enormous amount of time dealing with theoretical physics and abstract models.
One of the benefits of the book is that Pickering seems to be neutral with regard to the "abstract" v. "concrete" discussion in history and anthropology of science, and for this I think he deserves a lot of credit. The problem, though, is that the portion of the book where he's taken to be given an abstract account seems to be inaccessible to the audience who needs to see how that abstract account influences and is influenced by the concrete scientific practices... what results is a book that is problematic as a contribution to ongoing theoretical discussion, as well as historical scholarship.
Like the seminal "Leviathan and the Air-Pump," there are some claims in the book regarding the epistemology of science that are hugely controversial; unlike Leviathan, Pickering just takes them to be established by some very rudimentary theoretical work in the first chapter and doesn't attempt to illustrate them at any length throughout the discussion. While Leviathan's claims, I think, turn out to be unsuccessful, [see Boghossian's "Fear of Knowledge" and Parson's "Drawing out Leviathan" for a survey of that debate] the problem with Pickering's book isn't just that it stakes its territory on those controversial claims, but that it does not even turn out to be consistent with them, venturing far from the philosophical framework in the historical and anthropological project.
More frustrating is the often whiplash inducing transitions between very basic introductions to the sociological state of physics during the 50s-90s to incredibly technical discussions of the physics themselves. The book is supposed to be, in part, written for historians and anthropologists of science, and it seems implausible than anyone without a serious physics background could follow the technical sections; this seems to just be a technical issue with the writing, except that it stands in the way of understanding the complex conceptual change. Further, an inability to follow the heavily theoretical sections leaves many of Pickering's readers (especially those who recommended the book to me) with the impression that his account is principally about material and technological change in science, when the book spends an enormous amount of time dealing with theoretical physics and abstract models.
One of the benefits of the book is that Pickering seems to be neutral with regard to the "abstract" v. "concrete" discussion in history and anthropology of science, and for this I think he deserves a lot of credit. The problem, though, is that the portion of the book where he's taken to be given an abstract account seems to be inaccessible to the audience who needs to see how that abstract account influences and is influenced by the concrete scientific practices... what results is a book that is problematic as a contribution to ongoing theoretical discussion, as well as historical scholarship.
April 20, 2023
Some minor qualms with the particular claim of the social construction of reality and inconmensurability of the old and new physics. Mostly not because it doesn't apply to this particular case, but I think it would be wrong to tarnish all good science and thinking about the world in general as being a product of its social needs, context and convenience. Yes, this particular HEP community has become so tarnished, but there is still an independent reality out there for us to appreciate on reasonable grounds with reasonable argumentations. To deny this only disempowers us.
Other than this, it is a very impressive and rigorous analysis of the development of HEP through the 60's, 70's and 80's, and to the establishing of the standard model, and of the comparison between what he calls the old physics and this new physics of quarks and the standard model. It is also refreshing to see these topics considered in a sober manner. Popular science accounts from insiders of all these phenomena, always ring fake to me, as being the work of effectively a PR man, trying to promote his product that he has invested in. As a philosopher with little interest or attachment to a particular social institution of science and experimentation, but with a strong interest in truth, reality and reasonableness, that kind of attitude really grates on me, while the attitude of this book is much better and much more appropriate to the subject matter, and its truth status, as far as I am concerned.
The old physics (60's to early 70's) he describes focused on soft particle collisions and involved a viewing of the discovered phenomena as resonances with a kind of bootstrap approach. The newer physics (mid 70's onwards) focused more on hard scattering collisions, rarer experimental events. But events which lent more support to an atomistic style account of point-like entities being contained within protons and neutrons, that were purported to cause these rare hard scattering events. This was the new world of quarks, supported by a gauge theory approach, confinement, asymptotic freedom, and various other concepts that worked to contain experimental discoveries always by one parameter or another. If an unexpected particle arose, it could be explained with a mixture of asymptotic freedom or confinement, a new flavour or taste of quark or some other proposed cosmological historical event of spontaneous symmetry breaking.
The general point is that there may be some structure, but the strong need to find point-like entities lends the western world to a temptation to interpret this structure in a specific particulate way. The irony is that this whole atomic drive failed even with the model of the atom, with the basic particles of electrons, protons and neutrons. in which the idea of the electron as moving in the space around the atom failed because it would radiate away energy and collapse into the nucleus. Thus the whole notion of an atom moving in space was already gone here, and quantum mechanics confirmed this insight. Yet, this lesson was not learned by many, who still keep trying to force things into this pattern. We now see its limits emerging with the failure to observe proton decay. But to accept this failure would mean stripping away so many layers of ontologically committed theory, that instead it lingers around as a hoped for unresolved problem to be resolved by some miracle insight, when it is largely a problem of our own construction of committing to a fallacious world view.
This inability and refusal to ask basic ontological questions and apply our reason to reality directly lends us to be stuck in quandaries of this kind. And hopefully it can be sorted out by a less enthusiastic generation, less desperate to inform us of their almost achieved theory of everything, less desperate to act as PR men for big money scientific experiments, and more focused on sober assessments of the reality surrounding us.
Other than this, it is a very impressive and rigorous analysis of the development of HEP through the 60's, 70's and 80's, and to the establishing of the standard model, and of the comparison between what he calls the old physics and this new physics of quarks and the standard model. It is also refreshing to see these topics considered in a sober manner. Popular science accounts from insiders of all these phenomena, always ring fake to me, as being the work of effectively a PR man, trying to promote his product that he has invested in. As a philosopher with little interest or attachment to a particular social institution of science and experimentation, but with a strong interest in truth, reality and reasonableness, that kind of attitude really grates on me, while the attitude of this book is much better and much more appropriate to the subject matter, and its truth status, as far as I am concerned.
The old physics (60's to early 70's) he describes focused on soft particle collisions and involved a viewing of the discovered phenomena as resonances with a kind of bootstrap approach. The newer physics (mid 70's onwards) focused more on hard scattering collisions, rarer experimental events. But events which lent more support to an atomistic style account of point-like entities being contained within protons and neutrons, that were purported to cause these rare hard scattering events. This was the new world of quarks, supported by a gauge theory approach, confinement, asymptotic freedom, and various other concepts that worked to contain experimental discoveries always by one parameter or another. If an unexpected particle arose, it could be explained with a mixture of asymptotic freedom or confinement, a new flavour or taste of quark or some other proposed cosmological historical event of spontaneous symmetry breaking.
The general point is that there may be some structure, but the strong need to find point-like entities lends the western world to a temptation to interpret this structure in a specific particulate way. The irony is that this whole atomic drive failed even with the model of the atom, with the basic particles of electrons, protons and neutrons. in which the idea of the electron as moving in the space around the atom failed because it would radiate away energy and collapse into the nucleus. Thus the whole notion of an atom moving in space was already gone here, and quantum mechanics confirmed this insight. Yet, this lesson was not learned by many, who still keep trying to force things into this pattern. We now see its limits emerging with the failure to observe proton decay. But to accept this failure would mean stripping away so many layers of ontologically committed theory, that instead it lingers around as a hoped for unresolved problem to be resolved by some miracle insight, when it is largely a problem of our own construction of committing to a fallacious world view.
This inability and refusal to ask basic ontological questions and apply our reason to reality directly lends us to be stuck in quandaries of this kind. And hopefully it can be sorted out by a less enthusiastic generation, less desperate to inform us of their almost achieved theory of everything, less desperate to act as PR men for big money scientific experiments, and more focused on sober assessments of the reality surrounding us.
October 10, 2022
Usually I give a book a 1-star rating Only because it drifts off topic and into the author's opinions. This book did neither so it's well worth an explanation of why I'd give so low a rating to an otherwise topical relevance. The simple answers is disappointment. This book was recommended by Dr. Alex Unzicker, a physicist who I read and listen lectures on particle physics and cosmology and whose opinions I respect. I'd assumed since Dr. Unzicker is plane spoken about physics and spoke highly of this book, that it also would be plane-spoken on the topic of quarks and the history of high energy particle physics. But, the book is Not an introduction to Quark QCD and uses many proper nouns and terminology never introduced in the book text. Often the book has more introductory text in the obtuse chapter notes which in most cases should have been incorporated into the book text... was the author just lazy or was there reason to make the background text inter-mix with references. Lastly, the author is not a physicist... he's a sociologist. Often, for an introduction, one may find a non-specialist gives a better introduction to a field than its experts. This is Not the case with this book. For myself, I'm an engineer and technologist. I'm well-read and have an overall comprehensive understanding of math, engineering and general science. I still want for a lucid understanding of why so many scientist have tied themselves to a new Ptolemaic model of particle physics (if they have or haven't is not clear). I look forward to a clearer historic evolution of the field of study.
June 11, 2017
An impressively well-researched and erudite account of the development of high energy particle physics. This is dense in physics, however make no mistake this is written by a sociologist. Pickering leads the reader to his conclusion that the reality of quarks was the upshot of particle physicists' practice and not the reverse. Although I disagree with his conclusion (I find that his analysis misses much of the nuance of practice and would point to his fellow sociologist Harry Collin's work on Gravity's Shadow) this is a richly detailed work that deserves reading and discussing and arguing over for some time to come.
January 16, 2023
Not as ‘sociological’ as I hoped
August 31, 2014
A. History of 20th century physics: This history is broken into three stages of understanding the atom. Atomic physics was the study of the outer layer of the atom--the electron cloud. Nuclear physics turned its attention upon the nucleus which was a composite of protons and neutrons. Finally, after WWII elementary-particle physics discovered particles in the nucleus more elementary than the proton or neutron called quarks. This is also called high-energy physics (HEP) after its primary experimental tool the high-energy particle accelerator.
B. Argument: This book examines the post-war conceptual development of elementary-particle physics. The main argument is that scientists are not passive observers of nature. Instead, they are active manipulators of the world through a social symbiosis of experimental and theoretical practice. Thus, the quark is seen as constructed by the HEP community and not by nature itself.
C. Themes:
1. Opportunism in context. This is theme that runs throughout this book. Opportunism means that each scientist has a distinctive set of resources at his disposal. An experimentalist might have material resources. A theoretician might have an intangible expertise in a particular theory. These resources might be well matched or poorly matched to its context. Thus, knowledge is generated and new traditions are formed when opportunities are well matched with its context and shared across both theoretical and experimental physicists.
2. The hard sciences are not so hard. They are socially constructed.
3. There is never experimental closure. Only agreed upon closure.
4. The role of scientific judgment is a key to understand how experimental systems are created. Scientists have agency. They are not passive observers.
5. Incommensurability. This was a belief that Kuhn had that all theoretical positions are culturally and temporally specific. If moved in space or time the theoretical position would appear false. Pickering agrees with Kuhn. He says that the old and the new physics constituted distinct and disjoint worlds. The only difference with Kuhn here is that Kuhn predicted a period of duress between worldviews. Pickering finds that there was mutual congratulation between physicists moving from the old to the new physics.
D. Structure
1. The prehistory of HEP and its material constraints, 1945-64
a) This section examines the transformation from the old physics to the new physics. The old physics, based upon common sense experiment, developed the possibility that quarks existed (they also developed the ‘bootstrap’ conjecture). But a new physics arose based upon theory and these physicists were concerned only with quarks. The experimental practice shifted to this new model of quarks and reinforced the theorists position.
2. Constructing quarks and founding the new physics, 1964-74
a) This section deals with the establishment of the old physics and the early foundations of the new physics.
3. Establishing the new physics: The November Revolution and beyond
a) In November 1974 the new particles were announced. By 1976 it was accepted that they existed. These then are the years of the establishment of the new physics.
B. Argument: This book examines the post-war conceptual development of elementary-particle physics. The main argument is that scientists are not passive observers of nature. Instead, they are active manipulators of the world through a social symbiosis of experimental and theoretical practice. Thus, the quark is seen as constructed by the HEP community and not by nature itself.
C. Themes:
1. Opportunism in context. This is theme that runs throughout this book. Opportunism means that each scientist has a distinctive set of resources at his disposal. An experimentalist might have material resources. A theoretician might have an intangible expertise in a particular theory. These resources might be well matched or poorly matched to its context. Thus, knowledge is generated and new traditions are formed when opportunities are well matched with its context and shared across both theoretical and experimental physicists.
2. The hard sciences are not so hard. They are socially constructed.
3. There is never experimental closure. Only agreed upon closure.
4. The role of scientific judgment is a key to understand how experimental systems are created. Scientists have agency. They are not passive observers.
5. Incommensurability. This was a belief that Kuhn had that all theoretical positions are culturally and temporally specific. If moved in space or time the theoretical position would appear false. Pickering agrees with Kuhn. He says that the old and the new physics constituted distinct and disjoint worlds. The only difference with Kuhn here is that Kuhn predicted a period of duress between worldviews. Pickering finds that there was mutual congratulation between physicists moving from the old to the new physics.
D. Structure
1. The prehistory of HEP and its material constraints, 1945-64
a) This section examines the transformation from the old physics to the new physics. The old physics, based upon common sense experiment, developed the possibility that quarks existed (they also developed the ‘bootstrap’ conjecture). But a new physics arose based upon theory and these physicists were concerned only with quarks. The experimental practice shifted to this new model of quarks and reinforced the theorists position.
2. Constructing quarks and founding the new physics, 1964-74
a) This section deals with the establishment of the old physics and the early foundations of the new physics.
3. Establishing the new physics: The November Revolution and beyond
a) In November 1974 the new particles were announced. By 1976 it was accepted that they existed. These then are the years of the establishment of the new physics.
April 16, 2009
actually it's the Chicago Press edition from 1984, black cloth with silver titles. The last chapter is entitled 'producing a world'. It analyses the process and the history of particular scientific facts. Demonstrating how did these theories and facts become facts. If you consider how the extraordinary and awful history of the science of climate change has developed in the public realm, how much clearer the whole process looks after reading the book. It's the process..the process
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews