Chapter 5 focuses on Murray Gell-Mann who dominated particle physics for more than a decade starting in the mid-1950s. His perspective, style, and major contributions to physics, while I knew him, are described. A comparison of Feynman and Gell-Mann’s views on how to practice physics, and what they valued concludes this chapter.

A succession of toy field theories of increasing generality are described, the final one, missing all strong interactions, is based on mathematical quarks from which equal-time commutation relations of the weak and electromagnetic currents are abstracted. The Eightfold way and the Gell-Mann—Okubo mass formula are discussed, and Gell-Mann’s view of quarks is described in some detail. Examples of a darker side -- his pattern of inadequate attribution, that I only fully realized while writing this book -- are also given.

Chapter 2 chronicles the explosion in the number of strongly interacting particles, and efforts to understand them. It ends with an introduction to the discovery of quarks (originally called “aces”), and the resistance to accepting them for what they are: real particles that live in a deeper layer of reality.

The concepts of quantum number, resonance, and scattering cross section are explained, and the theories meant to explain the existence of strongly interacting particles are elucidated, including Fermi and Yang’s composite pion, Sakata’s composite hadrons, Chew and Frautschi’s “bootstrap,” and Heisenberg’s nonlinear spinor theory. The discovery of quarks suggested by the anomalous suppression of phi decay is detailed, and the importance of anomalies in physics is highlighted. Two remarkable meson and baryon mass relations are given. Both positive and negative reactions to the idea of quarks as constituents of hadrons are presented. Chapters 1 and 2 describe the recurring chaos and confusion that existed during the time between the discoveries of radioactivity and quarks. Once discovered, the path to the acceptance of quarks as real particles was equally confusing.

Starting from 2-flavor QCD, isospin symmetry is employed in order to explain themultiplets of light baryons and mesons, from a constituent quark perspective. Next weinvolve the strange quark and arrive at meson mixing as well as the Gell-Mann–Okuboformula for the baryon multiplet splitting. Regarding QCD from first principles, wecomment on lattice simulation results for the hadron masses. At last we discuss the hadronspectrum in a hypothetical world with Nc=5colors.

Oscillations between members of flavoured, electrically neutral meson pairs and the CP violation are phenomena strictly connected with the mixing. However, CP is more general, having been observed also in the decay of charged mesons.

CP violation was first observed in the neutral K system. We see the states of definite strangeness, those of definite CP and those with definite mass and lifetime. The oscillation between the former states, the mathematical expressions and the experimental evidence.

The oscillations and CP violation in the B0 system, and the beautiful experimental results obtained at dedicated high-luminosity electron–positron colliders, the ‘beauty factories’. Beauty physics at the dedicated experiment LHCb at LHC, in particular for the B0, that is not accessible to beauty factories. Examples of CP violation in B0. The recent discovery of CP violation in the charm sector.

How the many different measurements can be put together to test the SM with the unitary triangle.

The non-human has a long history of being represented in literature. Plants, animals, spirits, gods and, more recently, machines have been given agency and helped create enchanted visions of the world. The non-human has also been important in presenting universally recognizable characters, which have been central to the influence of certain genres and works in world literature, e.g. fairy tales and magical realism. This influence continues to be important but it has been supplemented with a new focus on the posthuman. Even though the idea of a succession to humanity would have been a logical consequence of Darwinism, it is has become a more pressing issue with the development of new technologies. Instead of apocalyptic visions of the end of the world, which have been central to not least foundational religious systems, the idea of the posthuman conjures up a new era for better or worse. Science fiction is rife with posthuman figures but also mainstream authors are taking up ideas of radically changed conditions for living. Literature’s responses have been manifold and have explored the once dated question of universalism under the influence of very concrete scenarios of change, and with a renewed sense of highlighting essential human traits in the Anthropocene.

British Decadence was, in large part, inspired by the poetry and prose of France. The cross-Channel traffic in advanced literature saw extremes of Francophobia and Francophilia in the British press, with writers such as Émile Zola having translations of their work censored and attacked in the House of Commons while receiving rapturous receptions when lecturing in London. A central figure in this traffic of Decadent literature was the poet Paul Verlaine, whose dissolute life scandalized the British public. As this chapter demonstrates, British writers took from their French counterparts both formal innovation and an antagonistic approach to moral orthodoxies. Verlaine’s queer sexuality and relentlessly self-scrutinizing approach to poetry came to symbolize for a generation of young English writers an intoxicating possibility of a poetic revolution against cultural hegemony. Verlaine’s lecture tour of England in late 1893 represents the highpoint of the British obsession with French décadence before the Wilde trials saw progressive literature retreat into the margins.

Chapter 3 focuses on discussions of simile (tashbīh) in the nonphilosophical critical tradition, namely, in al-Jurjānī’s Asrār al-balāgha (The Secrets of Eloquence), which forms the site of the most elaborate articulation of an aesthetic theory of wonder. The chapter argues that the pleasure that arises from simile is attributed to its ability to elucidate (bayān), which in turn allows the listener to go through an experience of discovery and wonder. The more effort is required to grasp a simile and the stranger it is, the more beautiful it is. The chapter goes on to show how the principles that enhance the strangeness and farfetchedness of simile put forth by al-Jurjānī are later systematized and organized in the science of eloquence as formalized by al-Sakkākī and al-Khaṭīb al-Qazwīnī. While the specific elements that allow for an experience of discovery in simile are unique to that figure, the general discovery-based theory of aesthetic experience forms the foundation for the aesthetics of metaphor and sentence construction, as well, which are tackled in Chapters 4 and 5.