From Certainty to Uncertainty
Subtitle: The Story of Science and Ideas in the Twentieth Century
Edition: 1st edition
Publisher: Joseph Henry Press
Published: May 2002
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 230
ISBN-13: 9780309076418
Subjects: History of ideas, intellectual history; History of science; Philosophy of science; 20th century; c 1700 to c 1800; c 1800 to c 1900; Physics; Chaos (Physics); History Of Physics; Science; Science/Mathematics; Chaotic behavior in systems; Certainty; History; Philosophy
Description: "Early Theorists believed that science promised certainty. Built on a foundation of fact and constructed with objective and trustworthy tools, science consistently produced knowledge. Then disturbing discoveries made by twentieth-century scientists revealed that this knowledge will always be fundamentally incomplete and that a true understanding of the world is ultimately beyond our grasp.".

"In this book, physicist F. David Peat examines the basic philosophic certainty that characterized the thinking of humankind through the nineteenth century and contrasts it with the startling fall of certainty in the twentieth. Indeed, the nineteenth century was marked by a boundless optimism and confidence in the power of progress and technology.

Our ebullience was so great, our belief in science so firm, that in 1900 the President of Britain's Royal Society proclaimed that everything of importance had already been discovered by science." "But it was not long before the seeds of a scientific revolution began to take root."--BOOK JACKET.