Books by Margaret Wertheim
Pythagoras's Trousers: God, Physics, and the Gender War
A spirited look at the relationship between physics and religion―and the implications for both sexes. Here is a fresh, astute social and cultural history of physics, from ancient Greece to our own time. From its inception, Margaret Wertheim shows, physics has been an overwhelmingly male-dominated activity; she argues that gender inequity in physics is a result of the religious origins of the enterprise.
Pythagoras' Trousers is a highly original history of one of science's most powerful disciplines. It is also a passionate argument for the need to involve both women and men in the process of shaping the technologies from the next generation of physicists.
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Physics on the Fringe: Smoke Rings, Circlons, and Alternative Theories of Everything
In 1993, Jim Carter, a trailer park owner in Enumclaw, Washington, sent out to a select group of scientists a letter announcing the publication of a book in which he proposed a complete alternative theory of physics. Gravity and matter, the periodic table, and the creation of the universe-all these Carter explained through wildly creative ideas perfected through backyard experiments using garbage cans and a disco fog machine to make giant smoke rings.
For the past fifteen years, acclaimed science writer Margaret Wertheim has been collecting the works of Jim Carter and other mavericks and outsiders who invent alternate theories of the universe. By considering the motivations behind their do-it-yourself theories and homemade experiments, Wertheim raises the question of what role an amateur can play in relationship to science. Deeply human, literally fantastical, infused with wit and humor, Physics on the Fringe challenges our conception of what science is, how it works, and who it is for.
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Physics on the Fringe: Smoke Rings, Circlons, and Alternative Theories of Everything
For the past fifteen years, acclaimed science writer Margaret Wertheim has been collecting the works of "outsider physicists," many without formal training and all convinced that they have found true alternative theories of the universe. Jim Carter, the Einstein of outsiders, has developed his own complete theory of matter and energy and gravity that he demonstrates with experiments in his backyard,-with garbage cans and a disco fog machine he makes smoke rings to test his ideas about atoms. Captivated by the imaginative power of his theories and his resolutely DIY attitude, Wertheim has been following Carter's progress for the past decade.
Centuries ago, natural philosophers puzzled out the laws of nature using the tools of observation and experimentation. Today, theoretical physics has become mathematically inscrutable, accessible only to an elite few. In rejecting this abstraction, outsider theorists insist that nature speaks a language we can all understand. Through a profoundly human profile of Jim Carter, Wertheim's exploration of the bizarre world of fringe physics challenges our conception of what science is, how it works, and who it is for.
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Pythagoras' Trousers: God, Physics, and the Gender Wars
This astute social and cultural history of physics explores how the development of physics has been intertwined with the rising power of institutionalized religion, and how both these predominantly masculine pursuits have influenced women's ability to join the physics community, the science itself, and the picture of reality it portrays.
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Hiroshi Sugimoto Time Machine
by Edmund de Waal, Margaret Wertheim, Allie Biswas, Geoffrey Batchen, Ralph Rugoff, James Attlee, David Chipperfield, Mami Kataoka, Lara Strongman
Der international renommierte Künstler und Fotograf Hiroshi Sugimoto hat durch seine ausgiebigen Erkundungen der Möglichkeiten von Fotografie einige der verführerischsten und rätselhaftesten Bildwerke unserer Zeit geschaffen. Hiroshi Sugimoto: Time Machine bietet einen umfassenden Überblick über die Arbeiten der letzten fünf Jahrzehnte. Die Publikation vereint seine wichtigsten fotografischen Serien wie Theaters und Seascapes, bis zu weniger bekannten Werken, die seinen innovativen, konzeptionellen Ansatz beleuchten. Beiträge von internationalen Schriftsteller*innen, Künstler*innen und Wissenschaftler*innen – darunter James Attlee, Allie Biswas, David Chipperfield, Edmund de Waal, Mami Kataoka, Ralph Rugoff, Lara Strongman und Margaret Wertheim – beleuchten seine philosophische und zugleich spielerische Auseinandersetzung mit unserem Verständnis von Zeit und Erinnerung sowie dem paradoxen Charakter der Fotografie zwischen Dokumentation und Erfindung.
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