The author dedicates this book to readers who are concerned with finding out the status of concepts, statements and hypotheses, and with clarifying and rearranging them in a logical order. It is thus not intended to teach tools and techniques of the trade, but to discuss the foundations on which seismology — and in a larger sense, the theory of wave propagation in solids — is built. A key question is: why and to what degree can a theory developed for an elastic continuum be used to investigate the propagation of waves in the Earth, which is neither a continuum nor fully elastic. But the scrutiny of the foundations goes much deeper: material symmetry, effective tensors, equivalent media; the influence (or, rather, the lack thereof) of gravitational and thermal effects and the rotation of the Earth, are discussed ab initio. The variational principles of Fermat and Hamilton and their consequences for the propagation of elastic waves, causality, Noether's theorem and its consequences on conservation of energy and conservation of linear momentum are but a few topics that are investigated in the process to establish seismology as a science and to investigate its relation to subjects like realism and empiricism in natural sciences, to the nature of explanations and predictions, and to experimental verification and refutation.
In the second edition, new sections, figures, examples, exercises and remarks are added. Most importantly, however, four new appendices of about one-hundred pages are included, which can serve as a self-contained continuum-mechanics course on finite elasticity. Also, they broaden the scope of elasticity theory commonly considered in seismology.

WAVES AND RAYS IN SEISMOLOGY: ANSWERS TO UNASKED QUESTIONS (SECOND EDITION)

Computers & Technology

Michael A Slawinski

Programming

World Scientific Publishing Co.

This remarkable collaboration between a mathematical physicist and a science philosopher concerns foundational and conceptual issues in seismology. Their aim is to present mathematical, physical and philosophical topics in a clear and concise manner. They provide an extensive philosophical discussion of the methods of science and show how seismology fits in. They explain with care and precision the basic structure of seismology, which is built on classical continuum mechanics. Not only do they explain how various models work in seismology, they also include an extensive discussion of the nature of models and idealizations. 
 Readership: Students and researchers in natural sciences and in philosophy of science.

ON FOUNDATIONS OF SEISMOLOGY: BRINGING IDEALIZATIONS DOWN TO EARTH

Business & Money

James Robert Brown

Economics

World Scientific Publishing Company

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Michael A Slawinski. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Michael A Slawinski