Philosophical Concepts in Physics: The Historical Relation Between Philosophy and Scientific Theories

Abstract

This book presents the ambitious enterprise, emerging from an interdisciplinary lecture course, to acquaint learned but not specialized readers with essentials of the philosophical prerequisites of physics and their consequences in a fairly historical sequence. The author, an experienced physics historian especially of modern topics, upon introducing two opposite standpoints for acquiring scientific knowledge (i.e. those of Aristotle and Francis Bacon), selects five fields of physical science, three from antiquity to 1900 and two from our century, for that purpose: the models of the universe from Ptolemy to Kepler, the mechanics of Galileo and Newton, and the electrodynamics of Faraday and Maxwell, on the one hand, and the schemes of relativity and quantum theories, on the other hand. Cushing concentrates on a very few important sources, such as Newton's Principia, Galileo's Letter to the Grand Duchess of 1515 (dealing with the Copernican system) or Maxwell's original papers, from which he quotes in some detail and which he carefully embeds into the historical background before deriving the main points for the modern reader. Thus he succeeds in focusing on the progress of crucial concepts in classical physics. Perhaps we miss in these `older chapters' a discussion of the thermodynamical concepts which constituted a decisive turn-off for 20th century physics. Concerning the modern world view, the author tries to restrict himself largely to the interpretation of the physical schemes, though these chapters ( say on both relativity theories) contain more technical formalism than the previous ones. For example, he puts great emphasis on more recent discussions of the interpretation of quantum mechanics by Bohm and Bell, which at times obscures the decisive conceptual progress achieved by the pioneeers Bohr, Born and Heisenberg, and might deceive unprepared readers about the possibility of returning to a more classical world view. Altogether, the book provides a good overview of the basis underlying 3000 years of physical knowledge, reliable (except for a few historical details, such as Rudolph II not being Emperor of Prussia!) and generous. It addresses many of the questions repeatedly asked in today's daily press, and should be welcomed by teachers, students and friends of science alike.