ThinkingAboutTheThinkable

Galileo’s Book, The Book of Nature is Written in Language of Mathematics Martin H. Krieger      11/24/19 7:34 AM Prolog: The Ising Model and The Stability of Matter— our recurring examples Preface -- Galileo was perhaps correct that Nature speaks in the language of mathematics, but it would seem that there are many such dialects, although it may be possible to say the same thing many of the dialects . Chapter 1: Learning from Newton   .   Lessons— Mathematical physics is never so isolated from the culture of its time, nor in fact is mathematics. Chapter 2: The Philosophy of Mathematical Physics .   Lessons— That mathematics is useful for physics and may be the language of Nature is perhaps no more surprising than for most people their legs are useful for walking. Chapter 3: Legerdemain   .   Lessons— It matters if you are persistent, and you have colleagues and teachers, and sometimes nothing helps. Chapter 4:...

Submtted to Technology and Culture The Development and Character of a Tightly-Coupled Technology: The Polaroid SX-70               I wish to describe what might be called a tightly-coupled technology and indicate features that likely are more generally present. The technology of a camera and a film specifically for it, the Polaroid SX-70 , is comparatively well documented in the open and the patent literature. When going through that literature, I felt much as did d’Alembert and Diderot, as they asked workers how they did their work and then diagrammed the processes. [1] For the SX-70 , the level of detail, the revelation of less-productive directions, and the motivations were it seems ready to be observed.               I want to give a more nuanced view of tight-coupling, and to take an historical example and in analyzing it to...