A01=Jed Z. Buchwald
Author_Jed Z. Buchwald
biography
Category=DNB
Category=PDX
Category=PH
cathode ray
charge
community
conductors
discovery
electric waves
electrodynamics
electromagnetic
energy
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_science
experiment
fechner-weber theory
germany
heinrich hertz
hermann von helmholtz
induction
innovation
invention
james clerk maxwell
lab notes
nonfiction
physics
polarization
radiators
science
scientific method
tacit knowledge
waveguides
wires
Product details
- ISBN 9780226078885
- Weight: 737g
- Dimensions: 15 x 23mm
- Publication Date: 15 Sep 1994
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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This volume is an attempt to reconstitute the tacit knowledge - the shared, unwritten assumptions, values and understandings - that shapes the work of science. Jed Z. Buchwald uses as his focus the social and intellectual world of 19th-century German physics. Drawing on the lab notes, published papers and unpublished manuscripts of Heinrich Hertz, Buchwald recreates Hertz's 1887 invention of a device that produced electromagnetic waves in wires. The invention itself was serendipitous and the device was quickly transformed, but Hertz's early experiments led to major innovations in electrodynamics. Buchwald explores the difficulty Hertz had in reconciling the theories of other physicists, including Hermann von Helmholtz and James Clerk Maxwell, and he considers the complex and often problematic connections between theory and experiment. In this first detailed scientific biography of Hertz and his scientific community, Buchwald demonstrates that tacit knowledge can be recovered so that we can begin to identify the unspoken rules that govern scientific practice.
