Modeling and Reality in Early Twentieth-Century Physics (original) (raw)
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Evolution of physics by albert instien
PREFACE BEFORE you begin reading, you rightly expect some simple questions to be answered. For what purpose has this book been written? Who is the imaginary reader for whom it is meant?
This review was inspired by this 460-page book that tells the story of the development of theories of matter. It's title gives the misleading impression that Science now understands the physical universe: it does not. Indeed, its two aims are to explain How the physical world works. 'How' is limited and it utterly fails to address the Why types of questions that Word-Smiths ('Philosophers') have raised; inspired by analogies with failed attempts to model physical objects, as purposeful mini-examples of human agents. This book is basically a history of PHYSICS with an attempt to explain it to the non-physicists. The author falsely assumes that a knowledge of the pre-Newtonian thinking about the World of Nature will help us to understand physics and cosmology thereafter: it does NOT. There are three stages in our views of nature: Historical, Classical and Modern. These are three very different views: as Thomas Kuhn showed, these are very different paradigms that each make a major break with their predecessors. Park clearly shows, in the first 1/3 of the book how we had began to make suitable, abstract mini-examples ("Models") of some simple parts of the world, that is now known as Historical philosophy. Then Classical Physics is briefly covered but wanders off into the Unknown without any real understanding. Modern Physics, being left with only mathematical representations of the invisible 'Objects' that are all we can propose to date. Like most theoretical physicists, his expertise is too heavily invested in mathematical techniques but he has not been able to show that Historical Natural Philosophy helps with making much progress in achieving better understanding of Twentieth Century physics in the final 1/3 of the book. This is a 'Bait-and-Switch' book that tries to use the past to explain modern physics, where Park utterly fails to provide any physical understanding of orthodox, mathematical physics that is all that is left, in the shell of physics today. NB The reviewer takes this opportunity to introduce his relational, unitary model to explain ALL of physics in terms of only electrons in a model understandable to non-scientists and regular physicists.
Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, 2008
The late 19th century debate among German-speaking physicists about theoretical entities is often regarded as foreshadowing the scientific realism debate. This paper brings out differences between them by concentrating on the part of the earlier debate that was concerned with the conceptual consistency of the competing conceptions of matter—mainly, but not exclusively, of atomism. Philosophical antinomies of atomism were taken up by Emil Du Bois-Reymond in an influential lecture in 1872. Such challenges to the consistency of atomism had repercussions within the physics community, as can be shown for the examples of Heinrich Hertz and Ludwig Boltzmann. The latter developed a series of counter-arguments, culminating in an ingenious attempt to turn the tables on the critics of atomism and prove the inconsistency of non-atomistic conceptions of nature. Underlying this controversy is a disagreement over specific goals of physical research which was considered crucially relevant to the further course of physical inquiry. It thereby exemplifies an attitude towards the realism issue that can be contrasted with a different, more neutral attitude of construing the realism issue as merely philosophical and indifferent with respect to concrete research programs in physics, which one also occasionally finds expressed in the 19th century controversy and which may be seen as the prevailing attitude of the 20th century debate.
The period 1895-1913 represents a watershed in the history of modern physics. i Indeed, experimental and theoretical work within the physics community during this time culminated in a new perspective on the structure of matter and the way that physicists viewed the world. ii The existence of a structured subatomic world was confirmed and classical theories were found deficient in fitting the new evidence. New theories were proposed to explain relationships between new phenomena. New models of the atom were constructed and shaped as metaphors for modern perspectives on the subatomic world. Methods, experiments and theories developed during these decades marked the beginning of a shift from classical theories of matter toward quantum mechanics. The new questions, along with the increasing lure of science during that time, helped transform the physics establishment. Scientists worked to contradict media and public reactions associating atomic physics with elixirs, poisons and doomsdays. Throughout the world, the thought of probing the atomic world inspired visions of both hope and fear. Historically, these developments reflected the complex interaction between cultural, economic, intellectual, technological and factors that underlie modern science.
Re-thinking a Scientific Revolution: An inquiry into late nineteenth-century theoretical physics
In the early 1890s, before his well-known experiments on cathode rays, J.J. Thomson outlined a discrete model of electromagnetic radiation. In the same years, Larmor was trying to match continuous with discrete models for matter and electricity. Just starting from Faraday"s tubes of force, J.J. Thomson put forward a reinterpretation of the electromagnetic field: energy, placed both in the tubes of force and in the motion of tubes of force, spread and propagated by discrete units, in accordance with a theoretical model quite different from Maxwell and Heaviside"s.
The fact that every generation rewrites history does not mean that the history itself or that the historical record changes all that much, but rather reflects how different groups at different times choose to regard different parts of the historical record and determine which is more important and significant for the present state of science. In other words, what is really significant in the previous history of science is a reflection of then current beliefs, attitudes and paradigms of science. Since the present dominant paradigm of physics is the quantum, the emphasis in the history of physics has been to de-emphasize or neglect any long term historical trends that lead to the alternative of relativity, continuity and the single unified field interpretation of physical reality. This does not reflect a conscious effort made by historians and scholars, but more of a realistic assessment of what is more interesting to the greater number of scientists at any given time. In other words there is no conspiracy to hide the historical truth. However, history can be subconsciously and unintentionally used to promote one scientific worldview as opposed to another. Since the quantum theory is the dominant paradigm in physics, those issues that deal more directly with the opposing worldview of relativity have been unnecessarily downplayed and important parts of history have been ignored and nearly lost. In spite of the importance of general relativity there are far fewer, and the numbers are staggering, histories of the development and philosophy of relativity theory than there are of the development and philosophy of quantum theory. Scientific issues that pertain more to relativity than the quantum are also shortchanged in the historical research and publications that follow from that research. In particular, the emphasis on the historical development of the concepts of space and time which have been considered to be continuous rather than discrete throughout the history of science, have been neglected. Furthermore, since the quantum presents a completely new and original idea that is unique in history, there is no real call to lend it a more historical countenance. Within physics itself, the quantum does not make any reference to the pre-history of individual events in its own realm of action and reaction. Each event is unique to a particular time (instant) and place (location) and that the notion of extended space and time are not absolutely necessary. However, what the longer history of science has well demonstrated is that the general concepts of space and time are essential and crucial to both the past and present development of science, a fact that quantum theory implies could not be true. Also, when the trends to develop and understand the physical nature of space are studied in depth and detail, the development of relativity and even general relativity look as if they were inevitable, a fact which seems at most to be at odds with the development of the quantum point-of-view of reality if not completely anti-quantum since relativity is based on continuity and the quantum is discrete. This view of nature cannot stand the test of time because nature is not two different things; it is one thing and thus necessitates only one fundamental theory to explain physical reality. Since science always moves toward a more theoretical version of physical truth, if the discrete quantum viewpoint does not truly represent the ultimate nature of reality, as now seems highly probable, not only science in the future will change, but how we regard the historical development of science, past and present, will also change to conform to new and coming changes in science. The new attitudes toward the ultimate nature of reality that are now changing science have now led us to the point that the past accepted history of science needs to be rewritten more accurately to better explain the direction that science is now taking and when this is done fundamental phallacies and other incorrect beliefs in both physics and its history emerge.