What We Talk about When We Talk about Physics

Physics in Perspective, 2018

Physics Is Its History Here is a radical view: in the final analysis, physics cannot be separated from ''the history of physics.'' Physics is its history. This claim appears radical because physicists of each generation inherit a set of problems that they are told urgently need addressing, a set of concepts and instruments with which to address them, and an idea of how to move forward. Physicists are occupied with that task of moving forward and might see no pressing need to understand exactly how they got the set of problems, concepts, and instrument that points the way forward. But knowing how the process of inheritance constrains that path is often key to overcoming otherwise insurmountable obstacles. Furthermore, history of physics cannot be understood without the kind of insight into its nature and significance that one gets from philosophy-both from searching reflection and questioning and from the philosophical texts that best exemplify that kind of hard thinking. This breaks with the usual view that physics, as a scientific endeavor, stands apart from history and philosophy, considered as part of the humanities, or perhaps the social sciences, but not the natural sciences as such. We nevertheless find ample reason to think of physics as integrated with history and philosophy. First of all, until recently, the most influential physicists were steeped in the developments that had preceded their own work and the texts in which their predecessors presented their understanding and its rationale. Newton studied Aristotle, Descartes, and Galileo carefully, as his own writings reveal. James Clerk Maxwell wrote that ''it is of great advantage to the student of any subject to read the original memoirs on that subject, for science is always most completely assimilated when it is in its nascent state.'' 1 Albert Einstein constantly referred to the work of the great physicists (though sometimes he was casual in his footnotes) as well as to philosophers; as a teenager, he devoured Kant's writings and later called himself a ''disciple of Spinoza.'' In a 1944 letter to the African-American physicist Robert Thornton, Einstein argued that ''a knowledge of the historic and philosophic background gives that kind of independence from prejudices of his generation from which most scientists are suffering. This independence created by philosophical thought is-in my opinion-the mark of distinction between a mere artisan or specialist and a real seeker after truth.'' 2 Phys. Perspect.

2015

Physics in textbooks is presented dogmatically, as if the physical magnitudes and laws are imposed by Nature. This sort of Physics refers to an idealized, not the real Nature. Moreover, the acceptance of a physical theory is determined from the preoccupations imposed by the culture of the time proper. Physics is the result of an endless effort to understand the World, so it cannot be dogmatic, as it is expected to change continuously. The current of different ideas, depicted in History and Philosophy, gives the opportunity to think about Nature making Physics a pleasant intellectual exercise.

arXiv (Cornell University), 2023

In the 60s of the last century the few courses of History of physics in Physics degree were held by scholars who, apart from a few exceptions, did not have a specific research background in the field. Some activities, books, social movements in the civil society allowed in the 70's the entry, among Physics courses, of teachings in History of physics held by scholars specifically trained for that job since their degree. A second change happened in the 90s when many difficulties forced physicists to allocate fewer and fewer resources to the History of their discipline. I'll outline the features of the two periods and the efforts of Historians to find a proper space in Physics departments.

Atti della Accademia Peloritana dei Pericolanti : Classe di Scienze Fisiche, Matematiche e Naturali, 2021

Modern physics is a complex multiplicity of practices: theoretical, mathematical, experimental and simulation practices. Experimental and simulation practices are related to the pragmatic dimension of a physical theory. Mathematical practices are related to the syntactic dimension of a physical theory, but theoretical practices involve an often neglected semantic dimension. Physics and consequently teaching physics are usually reduced to the syntactic and pragmatic dimensions. Semantic dimension is linked to the conceptualization of the physical reality, to the conception of Nature. By neglecting the semantic dimension, physics is reduced to a pure mathematical game and to technological manipulations. Thus, the cultural aspect of science is lost and physics education is reduced to a mere technical training. This process of de-culturalization of science had its roots in the Enlightenment's turn in physics to free it from theology and metaphysics and had its completion in the post-second-world-war era. I believe we have to recover the cultural aspects of physics to understand it more deeply in its whole complexity. We have to recover all its relationships with other disciplines as philosophy, mathematics, psychology, sociology and other sciences, even theology, which are fundamental to constitute its semantic dimension. Historical approach to physics and physics education is the only way to recover this interdisciplinarity at the roots of the various physical conceptions of Nature. In this way, for example, we can understand that beyond mechanics there is a mechanist conception of Nature, beyond thermodynamics there is a thermodynamical conception of Nature, and beyond electromagnetism there is an electromagnetic conception of Nature. These different conceptions of Nature are not compatible and their historical fight has produced the relativistic, quantum and chaos revolutions in XX century physics. These different conceptions of Nature imply different existential self-understanding of the meaning of mankind in the universe and different ethical perspectives.

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 2007

des services d'édition numérique de documents scientifiques depuis 1998.

Given the fact that half the world's population is female, there is a notable absence of women in this history. This is largely because women have been systematically excluded from science over the centuries until very recently, with few exceptions. Even when women did make major contributions as part of a larger team in relatively recent times, as was the case of the women "computers" in astronomy at Harvard College Observatory in the late 1800s, usually only the male team leader gained recognition [Rossiter]. One can only mourn the loss to the discipline from the exclusion of other Marie Curies, and work towards encouraging the participation of many more women in the future.

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.

Science Education and Culture, 2001

Our research is focused on the selection, classification and comparative presentation of the various proposals concerning the contribution of the history of physics in physics education, that have been designed and/or carried out as part of either research or curriculum development during the last century. The framework of the classification is the result of the study of the aims of the teaching-learning of physics, as they have been presented since the 1960s, coupled with the current trends in science education, including discovery learning in the 1960s and constructivism nowadays. The study of the various proposals concerning the contribution of the history of physics in physics education revealed different points of view and led to the creation of new sub-categories of the initial framework. In an attempt to have a better overall view of the classification, we designed a chart so that the various proposals reported could be observed and commented on in a comparative way. The framework of the classification is presented on the vertical axis of a chart, while time from 1893, the year of the earliest reference available (Lodge 1893), till today is presented on the horizontal axis.

Natural Sciences and Human Thought, 1995

The relationship between natural sciences and human thought has long been at the centre of philosophical debate and has of course been the subject of a variety of interpretations. Beginning in the middle of last century developments in scientific disciplines accelerated the dissolution of the idealist and positivist synthesis and opened the way for a (partially) new role for philosophy: the critical analysis of the results and the methodologies of science. In this century neo-Kantian discussions about the conditions determining the possibility of scientific knowledge, the neopositivist analysis of scientific theories, phenomenological attempts to achieve a closer grasp of reality, sociological emphasis on the role of shared values, and linguistic explanations have shared the stage to various degrees. In addition, far-reaching criticism of the general scientific approach to knowledge and of its technological implications has stressed the limits not only of the scientific concept of truth but also, and more radically, the possibility of the subject's access to "rational" knowledge free of historically determined values, interests, emotions, and feelings. From this point of view man's very nature precludes the possibility of critical enquiry based on rational criteria of extratemporal validity. Controversial postmodernist trends stress differences rather than unity and localize and relativize values and meanings. There is a widespread belief that "the positive knowledge of science may not ultimately be for the best, as the downside of scientifically produced military and industrial technics becomes quite unavoidably apparent" [1]. All these philosophical trends have had an influence on history, philosophy, and sociology of science. Historiography, still based on a linear, cumulative, positivist approach at the beginning of the century, shifted in the 1960s toward more sophisticated rational reconstructions in the form of the dynamics of research programs, only to be challenged by intellectual history and the history of ideas, on the one hand and by the sociology of institutions and, more recently, the sociology of knowledge, on the other. New cultural, anthropological, archaeological, and "gender" studies are coming forward, while textual analysis