Martin H. Krieger - Böcker

In this work, Martin H. Krieger shows what physicists are really doing behind the nearly impenetrable cloud of mathematical models they use as research tools. He argues that the technical details of these complex calculations serve not only as a means to an end, but also reveal key aspects of the physical properties they model. Using two "tours de force" of modern physics as case studies, as proofs that ordinary matter is stable, and solutions to the Ising model of a phase transition (how a liquid freezes to a solid, for instance), Krieger seeks to uncover the philosophical foundations on which the mathematical models of these phenomena are built.

Doing Physics makes concepts of physics easier to grasp by relating them to everyday knowledge. Addressing some of the models and metaphors that physicists use to explain the physical world, Martin H. Krieger describes the conceptual world of physics by means of analogies to economics, anthropology, theater, carpentry, mechanisms such as clockworks, and machine tool design. The interaction of elementary particles or chemical species, for example, can be related to the theory of kinship—who can marry whom is like what can interact with what. Likewise, the description of physical situations in terms of interdependent particles and fields is analogous to the design of a factory with its division of labor among specialists. For the new edition, Krieger has revised the text and added a chapter on the role of mathematics and formal models in physics. Doing Physics will be of special interest to economists, political theorists, anthropologists, and sociologists as well as philosophers of science.

The product of a lifetime of experience in American universities, The Scholar's Survival Manual offers advice for students, professors, and administrators on how to get work done, the path to becoming a professor, getting tenured, and making visible contributions to scholarship, as well as serving on promotion and tenure committees. Martin H. Krieger covers a broad cross section of the academic experience from a graduate student's first foray into the job market through retirement. Because advice is notoriously difficult to take and context matters a great deal, Krieger has allowed his ideas to percolate through dozens of discussions. Some of the advice is instrumental, matters of expediency; some demands our highest aspirations. Readers may open the book at any place and begin reading; for the more systematic there is a detailed table of contents. Krieger's tone is direct, an approach born of the knowledge that students and professors too often ignore suggestions that would have prevented them from becoming academic roadkill. This essential book will help readers sidestep a similar fate.

The product of a lifetime of experience in American universities, The Scholar's Survival Manual offers advice for students, professors, and administrators on how to get work done, the path to becoming a professor, getting tenured, and making visible contributions to scholarship, as well as serving on promotion and tenure committees. Martin H. Krieger covers a broad cross section of the academic experience from a graduate student's first foray into the job market through retirement. Because advice is notoriously difficult to take and context matters a great deal, Krieger has allowed his ideas to percolate through dozens of discussions. Some of the advice is instrumental, matters of expediency; some demands our highest aspirations. Readers may open the book at any place and begin reading; for the more systematic there is a detailed table of contents. Krieger's tone is direct, an approach born of the knowledge that students and professors too often ignore suggestions that would have prevented them from becoming academic roadkill. This essential book will help readers sidestep a similar fate.

Tomography is a method of exploring a phenomenon through a large number of examples or perspectives. In medical tomography, such as a CAT scan, two-dimensional slices or images of a three-dimensional organ are used to envision the organ itself. Urban tomography applies the same approach to the study of city life. To appreciate different aspects of a community, from infrastructure to work to worship, urban planning expert Martin H. Krieger scans the myriad sights and sounds of contemporary Los Angeles. He examines these slices of life in Urban Tomographies.The book begins by introducing tomographic methods and the principles behind them, which are taken from phenomenological philosophy. It draws from the examples of Lee Friedlander and Walker Evans, as well as Denis Diderot, Charles Marville, and EugÈne Atget, who documented the many facets of Paris life in three crucial periods. Rather than focus on singular, extraordinary figures and events as do most documentarians, Krieger looks instead at the typical, presenting multiple specific images that call attention to people and activities usually rendered invisible by commonality. He took tens of thousands of photographs of industrial sites, markets, electrical distributing stations, and storefront churches throughout Los Angeles. He also recorded the city's ambient sounds, from the calls of a tamale vendor to the buzz of a workshop saw. Krieger considers these samples from the urban sensorium in this innovative volume, resulting in a thoughtful illumination of the interplay of people with and within the built environment. With numerous maps and photographs, as well as Krieger's unique insights, Urban Tomographies provides an unusually representative and rounded view of the city.

Many philosophers, physicists, and mathematicians have wondered about the remarkable relationship between mathematics with its abstract, pure, independent structures on one side, and the wilderness of natural phenomena on the other.

This book discusses some ways of doing mathematical work and the subject matter that is being worked upon and created. It argues that the conventions we adopt, the subject areas we delimit, what we can prove and calculate about the physical world, and the analogies that work for mathematicians — all depend on mathematics, what will work out and what won't. And the mathematics, as it is done, is shaped and supported, or not, by convention, subject matter, calculation, and analogy. The cases studied include the central limit theorem of statistics, the sound of the shape of a drum, the connection between algebra and topology, the stability of matter, the Ising model, and the Langlands Program in number theory and representation theory.

This book discusses some ways of doing mathematical work and the subject matter that is being worked upon and created. It argues that the conventions we adopt, the subject areas we delimit, what we can prove and calculate about the physical world, and the analogies that work for mathematicians — all depend on mathematics, what will work out and what won't. And the mathematics, as it is done, is shaped and supported, or not, by convention, subject matter, calculation, and analogy. The cases studied include the central limit theorem of statistics, the sound of the shape of a drum, the connection between algebra and topology, the stability of matter, the Ising model, and the Langlands Program in number theory and representation theory.

In this book, Martin Krieger provides a detailed and practical guide for readers who wish to become more effective scholars, teachers, and administrators. The Thriving Professor dispenses usable insights that smooth the passages through promotion and tenure, and enable the scholar to write and publish more effectively as well as to avoid traps along the way.This work is helpful to those manoeuvring through academic difficulties. It offers essential advice to professors at every stage in their careers to move forward, and takes much of the myth out of the academic life. The Thriving Professor is the friendly mentor everyone wishes for. Krieger says out loud what others hint at, and is non-judgmental.

Doing Mathematics discusses some ways mathematicians and mathematical physicists do their work and the subject matters they uncover and fashion. The conventions they adopt, the subject areas they delimit, what they can prove and calculate about the physical world, and the analogies they discover and employ, all depend on the mathematics — what will work out and what won't. The cases studied include the central limit theorem of statistics, the sound of the shape of a drum, the connections between algebra and topology, and the series of rigorous proofs of the stability of matter. The many and varied solutions to the two-dimensional Ising model of ferromagnetism make sense as a whole when they are seen in an analogy developed by Richard Dedekind in the 1880s to algebraicize Riemann's function theory; by Robert Langlands' program in number theory and representation theory; and, by the analogy between one-dimensional quantum mechanics and two-dimensional classical statistical mechanics. In effect, we begin to see "an identity in a manifold presentation of profiles," as the phenomenologists would say.This second edition deepens the particular examples; it describe the practical role of mathematical rigor; it suggests what might be a mathematician's philosophy of mathematics; and, it shows how an "ugly" first proof or derivation embodies essential features, only to be appreciated after many subsequent proofs. Natural scientists and mathematicians trade physical models and abstract objects, remaking them to suit their needs, discovering new roles for them as in the recent case of the Painlevé transcendents, the Tracy-Widom distribution, and Toeplitz determinants. And mathematics has provided the models and analogies, the ordinary language, for describing the everyday world, the structure of cities, or God's infinitude.