Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-6bf8c574d5-n2sc8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-03-04T00:45:29.268Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

19 - Quantum Field Theory: From QED to the Standard Model

from Part IV - Atomic and Molecular Sciences in the Twentieth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

By
Silvan Schweber
Edited by
Mary Jo Nye
Mary Jo Nye
Affiliation:
Oregon State University
Get access

Summary

Until the 1980s, it was usual to tell the story of the developments in physics during the twentieth century as “inward bound” – from atoms, to nuclei and electrons, to nucleons and mesons, and then to quarks – and to focus on conceptual advances. The typical exposition was a narrative beginning with Max Planck (1858–1947) and the quantum hypothesis and Albert Einstein (1879–1955) and the special theory of relativity, and culminating with the formulation of the standard model of the electroweak and strong interactions during the 1970s. Theoretical understanding took pride of place, and commitment to reductionism and unification was seen as the most important factor in explaining the success of the program. The Kuhnian model of the growth of scientific knowledge, with its revolutionary paradigm shifts, buttressed the primacy of theory and the view that experimentation and instrumentation were subordinate to and entrained by theory.

The situation changed after Ian Hacking, Peter Galison, Bruno Latour, Simon Schaffer, and other historians, philosophers, and sociologists of science reanalyzed and reassessed the practices and roles of experimentation. It has become clear that accounting for the growth of knowledge in the physical sciences during the twentieth century is a complex story. Advances in physics were driven and secured by a host of factors, including contingent ones. Furthermore, it is often difficult to separate the social, sociological, and political factors from the technical and intellectual ones.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of Science , pp. 375 - 393
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2002

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bethe, Hans, “The Meson Theory of Nuclear Forces,” Physical Review, 57 (1940)Google Scholar
Brown, L. M. and Hoddeson, Lillian, The Birth of Particle Physics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983)Google Scholar
Brown, L. M. and Rechenberg, H., “Quantum Field Theories, Nuclear Forces, and the Cosmic Rays (1934–1938),” American Journal of Physics, 59 (1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, L. M., “How Yukawa Arrived at the Meson Theory,” Progress of Theoretical Physics, suppl. 85 (1985)Google Scholar
Brown, Laurie M., Dresden, Max, and Hoddeson, Lillian, eds., Pions to Quarks: Particle Physics in the 1950s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cao, T., Conceptual Developments of 20th-Century Field Theories (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Creutz, M., Quarks, Gluons and Lattices (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983)Google Scholar
Cushing, J. T., Theory Construction and Selection in Modern Physics: The S Matrix (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Darrigol, Olivier, “The Origin of Quantized Matter Waves,” Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences, 16:2 (1986)Google Scholar
Davies, Paul, ed., The New Physics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989)Google Scholar
Dimopoulous, S., Raby, S. A., and Wilczek, F., “Unification of Couplings,” Physics Today, 44, no. 10 (1991)Google Scholar
Fermi, Enrico, “Versuch einer Theorie der β-Strahlen. I,” Zeitschriftfur Physik, 88 (1934)Google Scholar
Galison, Peter, Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997)Google Scholar
Galison, , How Experiments End (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987)Google Scholar
Gell-Mann, M. and Ne’eman, Y., The Eightfold Way (New York: Benjamin, 1964)Google Scholar
Georgi, H. and Glashow, S. L., “Unified Theory of Elementary Particle Forces,” Physics Today, 33, no. 9 (1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gottfried, K. and Weisskopf, V., Concepts of Particle Physics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986)Google Scholar
Greenberg, O. W., “Color: From Baryon Spectroscopy to QCD,” in Gai, M., ed., Baryons ’92: International Conference on the Structure of Baryons and Related Mesons (Singapore: World Scientific, 1993)Google Scholar
Hacking, Ian, “Styles of Scientific Reasoning,” in Post-Analytic Philosophy, ed. Rajchman, John and West, Cornell (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986)Google Scholar
Hooft, Gerard’t, In Search of the Ultimate Building Blocks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)Google Scholar
Kevles, Daniel J., “Preface 1995: The Death of the Superconducting Super Collider in the Life of American Physics,” in The Physicists: The History of a Scientific Community in Modern America, 2d ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995)Google Scholar
Kokkedee, J. J. J., The Quark Model (New York: Benjamin, 1969)Google Scholar
Kragh, Helge, Dirac:A Scientific Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990)Google Scholar
Marshak, R. E., Conceptual Foundations of Modern Particle Physics (Singapore: World Scientific, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meyenn, K., Wolfgang Pauli: Wissenschaftlicher Briefwechsel, vol. 2 (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1979)Google Scholar
Pais, A., Inward Bound: Of Matter and Forces in the Physical World (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986)Google Scholar
Pickering, Andrew, Constructing Quarks: A Sociological History of Particle Physics (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1984)Google Scholar
Riordan, Michael, The Hunting of the Quark: A True Story of Modern Physics (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987)Google Scholar
Schweber, , QED and the Men Who Made It (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994)Google Scholar
Schweber, Silvan S., “From ‘Elementary’ to ‘Fundamental’ Particles,” in Science in the Twentieth Century, ed. Krige, John and Pestre, Dominique (Amsterdam: Harwood, 1997)Google Scholar
Treiman, S., “A Life in Particle Physics,” Annual Reviews of Nuclear and Particle Science, 46 (1996), at p.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weinberg, Steve, Dreams of a Final Theory: The Search for the Fundamental Laws of Nature (New York: Pantheon, 1992)Google Scholar
Weinberg, Steven, The Quantum Theory of Fields, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995–6)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weinberg, Steven, “The Search for Unity: Notes for a History of Quantum Field Theory,” Daedalus (Fall, 1977)Google Scholar
Wheeler, John A., “Problems and Prospects in Elementary Particle Research,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 90 (1946)Google ScholarPubMed
Wilczek, Frank, “The Future of Particle Physics as a Natural Science,” in Critical Problems in Physics, ed. Fitch, V. A., Marlow, D. R., and Dementi, M. A. E. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997)Google Scholar
Wilczek, in Zerwas, P. M. and Kastrup, H. A., eds., QCD 20 Years Later (Singapore: World Scientific, 1993), p.Google Scholar
Zerwas, P. M. and Kastrup, H. A., QCD 20 Years Later (Singapore: World Scientific, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×