Insights of Genius: Imagery and Creativity in Science and Art [Paperback]

Since the Enlightenment, science has been seen as an objective, true method of explanation about the physical and mathematical laws that explain and govern the universe. The 20th Century has shown that science is also a human enterprise, informed by idealogy and other assumptions. In this book, distinguished historian and philosopher of science Arthur Miller examines these and other important questions about what and how we know about the world. Dr. Miller also discusses, in non-technical language, our current ideas about the nature of scientific thought and explanation, its relation to truth, and the relationship between scientific and common sense. Does science, in its historical claim as an exalted endeavor, stand above other human activities?1 Common Sense and Scientific Intuition.- At the Beginning.- The Mindset of Renaissance Scientists.- Galileos Imagination.- Conceptual Frameworks and Common Sense.- Galileo and Newton Become Common Sense.- The Waviness of Light Waves.- Life on a Moving Platform.- A Problem with Relative Motion.- /Another Way to Think About Relative Motion.- Time and Light.- Concluding Comments.- 2 The Intuition of Atoms.- But Is Light Really a Wave?.- The Visual Imagery of Intuition.- Atoms and Solar Systems.- Atomic Intuition and Visualization.- Visualization Lost, Intuition Redefined.- Intuitivity: The Central Issue.- Another Redefinition of Intuition.- Visualization Regained, in Part.- Extending Intuition: Bohrs Correspondence Principle.- Concluding Comments.- 3 Scientific Methods.- The Verdict of Experiment or Not?.- Data, Data Everywhere&.- Unwanted Precision.- Picking and Choosing Data.- Sociology Influences Science.- The Principle of Relativity.- Conservation of Energy.- Heat Is Energy.- Unification of the Sciences.- 4 Faith in an Ordered Universe.- Certainty and/or Knowledge?.- The Sign of the Time.- Carnots Imaginary Engine.- The Birth of Uncertainty.- A Mal du Si?cle Over the Fin de Si?cle.- Causality in Quantum Physics.- The ImlÃ,