From Current Algebra to Quantum Chromodynamics
A Case for Structural Realism

This book examines complex physical, philosophical and historiographical issues relating to quantum chromodynamics for graduate students and researchers.

Tian Yu Cao (Author)

9781107411395, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 25 October 2012

320 pages
24.6 x 18.9 x 1.7 cm, 0.58 kg

'Cao's book provides many historical and conceptual insights into the fascinating development of QCD.' Vincent Lam, Philosophy in Review

The advent of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) in the early 1970s was one of the most important events in twentieth-century science. This book examines the conceptual steps that were crucial to the rise of QCD, placing them in historical context against the background of debates that were ongoing between the bootstrap approach and composite modeling, and between mathematical and realistic conceptions of quarks. It explains the origins of QCD in current algebra and its development through high-energy experiments, model-building, mathematical analysis and conceptual synthesis. Addressing a range of complex physical, philosophical and historiographical issues in detail, this book will interest graduate students and researchers in physics and in the history and philosophy of science.

1. Introduction
2. The rise of current algebra (CA)
3. Sum rules
4. Saturation and closure
5. Scaling
6. Theorizations of scaling
7. The advent of quantum chromodynamics (QCD)
8. Early justifications and explorations
9. Structural realism and the construction of QCD
10. Historiographical issues in the CA-QCD narrative.

Subject Areas: Particle & high-energy physics [PHP], Nuclear physics [PHN], History of science [PDX], Philosophy of science [PDA]