Get Free Shipping on orders over $0
What Is Real? : Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics - Giorgio Agamben

What Is Real?

By: Giorgio Agamben, Lorenzo Chiesa (Translator)

Paperback | 13 November 2018

At a Glance

Paperback


RRP $46.99

$46.75

or 4 interest-free payments of $11.69 with

 or 

Ships in 5 to 10 business days

Eighty years ago, Ettore Majorana, a brilliant student of Enrico Fermi, disappeared under mysterious circumstances while going by ship from Palermo to Naples. How is it possible that the most talented physicist of his generation vanished without leaving a trace? It has long been speculated that Majorana decided to abandon physics, disappearing because he had precociously realized that nuclear fission would inevitably lead to the atomic bomb. This book advances a different hypothesis. Through a careful analysis of Majorana's article "The Value of Statistical Laws in Physics and Social Sciences," which shows how in quantum physics reality is dissolved into probability, and in dialogue with Simone Weil's considerations on the topic, Giorgio Agamben suggests that, by disappearing into thin air, Majorana turned his very person into an exemplary cipher of the status of the real in our probabilistic universe. In so doing, the physicist posed a question to science that is still awaiting an answer: What is Real?

More in History of Science

The Shortest History of Innovation - Andrew Leigh
Sapiens : A Graphic History: Volume 1 - Yuval Noah Harari

RRP $39.99

$31.75

21%
OFF
Sapiens A Graphic History, Volume 2 : The Pillars of Civilization - Yuval Noah Harari
Royal Observatory Greenwich : A History in Objects - Louise Devoy
The Body : A Guide for Occupants - Bill Bryson

RRP $26.99

$22.99

15%
OFF
A Short History of Nearly Everything 2.0 - Bill Bryson

RRP $36.99

$29.75

20%
OFF
Geology : An Illustrated History - David Bainbridge

RRP $49.99

$40.75

18%
OFF
Frankenstein : Collins Classics - Mary Shelley

RRP $9.99

$8.75

12%
OFF
Nightfaring : In Search of the Disappearing Darkness - Megan Eaves-Egenes
The Origin of Species : 150th Anniversary Edition - Charles Darwin
The Biggest Ideas in the Universe 1 : Space, Time and Motion - Sean Carroll
Sapiens A Graphic History, Volume 3 : The Masters of History - Yuval Noah Harari
The Physics Book : Big Ideas Simply Explained - DK

RRP $42.99

$32.75

24%
OFF
The Biggest Ideas in the Universe 2 : Quanta and Fields - Sean Carroll
Indescribable : 100 Devotions For Kids About God And Science - Louie Giglio
Material World : A Substantial Story of Our Past and Future - Ed Conway
Longitude - Dava Sobel

Paperback

RRP $22.99

$19.75

14%
OFF
Architecture : From Prehistory to Climate Emergency - Barnabas Calder