Physics And Politics

I. THE PRELIMINARY AGE II. THE USE OF CONFLICT III. NATION-MAKING IV. NATION-MAKING V. THE AGE OF DISCUSSION VI. VERIFIABLE PROGRESS POLITICALLY CONSIDERED

A brilliant essay in social psychology and one of the great short masterpieces of 19th-century thought, Physics and Politics defines with grim humor the conditions of stability and social progress. We go to Bagehot for something that seems very difficult to convey accurately through mere definition or single examples--the true character of political man. --Jacques Barzun. With an Introduction and Notes by Roger Kimball.

Aided by personal documents and institutional archives that were closed for decades, this book recounts the development of physics—or, more aptly, science under stress—in Soviet Russia up to World War II. Focusing on Leningrad, center of Soviet physics until the late 1930s, Josephson discusses the impact of scientific, cultural, and political revolution on physicists' research and professional aspirations. Political and social revolution in Russia threatened to confound the scientific revolution. Physicists eager to investigate new concepts of space, energy, light, and motion were forced to accommodate dialectical materialism and subordinate their interests to those of the state. They ultimately faced Stalinist purges and the shift of physics leadership to Moscow. This account of scientists cut off from their Western colleagues reveals a little-known part of the history of modern physics.

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