A history of the ideas of theoretical physics: Essays on the 19th and 20th century physics (Vol. 213 of Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science): Salvo d’Agostino; Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, Boston, London, 2000, 381pp., $173.00 US, ISBN 0-7923-6094-X
✍ Scribed by Alfred Nordmann
- Publisher
- Elsevier Science
- Year
- 2003
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 69 KB
- Volume
- 34
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 1355-2198
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
The title of Salvo d'Agostino's book suggests that it may contain a collection of various and sundry ideas from the history of theoretical physics. However, d'Agostino pursues something far more specific and compelling, yet also far more controversial: a history of the idea of theoretical physics. When, how, and why did physics become theoretical physics, and what did this shift mean? While some would argue that physics became theoretical at a time of stasis and sterility, perhaps decadence or crisis, d'Agostino considers the epistemological turn of physics liberating, productive, even empowering.
Towards the end of the book, d'Agostino quotes Erwin Schr . odinger who, in 1951, quoted Ludwig Boltzmann:
Ludwig Boltzmann strongly emphasized this point: let me be quite precise, he would say, childishly precise about my model, even though I know that I cannot guess from the ever incomplete circumstantial evidence of experiments what nature really is like. But without an absolutely precise model thinking itself becomes imprecise, and the consequences to be derived from the model become ambiguous. 1