Among the many works devoted to Copernicus's five hundredth anniversary, the article published here, by the German scientist H.-J. Treder, occupies a special place in the world literature on this subject thanks to its depth of analysis of Copernican concepts. Its author, a member of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR and Director of the Potsdam Astronomical Observatory, is known for his works on Einstein's relativity and gravitation theories. His understanding of Einstein's theory is entirely in accord with the (...) viewpoint advanced in my book The Theory of Space, Time, and Gravitation [Teoriia prostranstva, vremeni i tiagoteniia] , and he cites it repeatedly. In particular, we ascribe major and fundamental significance to the fact that Einstein's gravitation equations require for their solution certain limiting conditions which Einstein's theory, however, does not provide. In order to fill this theoretical gap, it is necessary to introduce certain supplemental hypotheses of a geometrical character concerning space as a whole. Treder very ingeniously demonstrates the similarity between these hypotheses and the ideas of Copernicus. (shrink)

The present paper investigates why logical empiricists remained silent about one of the most philosophy-laden matters of theoretical physics of their day, the principle of least action (PLA). In the two decades around 1900, the PLA enjoyed a remarkable renaissance as a formal unification of mechanics, electrodynamics, thermodynamics, and relativity theory. Taking Ernst Mach's historico-critical stance, it could be liberated from much of its physico-theological dross. Variational calculus, the mathematical discipline on which the PLA was based, obtained a new rigorous (...) basis. These three developments prompted Max Planck to consider the PLA as formal embodiment of his convergent realist methodology. Typically rejecting ontological reductionism, David Hilbert took the PLA as the key concept in his axiomatizations of physical theories. It served one of the main goals of the axiomatic method: ''deepening the foundations.'' Although Moritz Schlick was a student of Planck's, and Hans Hahn and Philipp Frank enjoyed close ties to Gottingen, the PLA became a veritable Shibboleth to them. Rather than being worried by its historical connections with teleology and determinism, they erroneously identified Hilbert's axiomatic method tout court with Planck's metaphysical realism. Logical empiricists' strict containment policy against metaphysics required so strict a separation between physics and mathematics to exclude even those features of the PLA and the axiomatic method not tainted with metaphysics. (shrink)

The present authors have given a mathematical model of Mach's principle and of the Mach–Einstein doctrine about the complete induction of the inertial masses by the gravitation of the universe. The analytical formulation of the Mach–Einstein doctrine is based on Riemann's generalization of the Lagrangian analytical mechanics (with a generalization of the Galilean transformation) on Mach's definition of the inertial mass and on Einstein's principle of equivalence. All local and cosmological effects—which are postulated as consequences of Mach's principle by C. (...) Neumann, Mach, Friedländer and Einstein—result from the Riemannian dynamics with the Mach–Einstein doctrine. In celestial mechanics it follows, in addition, Einstein's formula for the perihelion motion. In cosmology, the Riemannian mechanics yields two models of an evolutionary universe with the expansion lows R ~ t or R ~ t2. In this paper, secular consequences of the Mach–Einstein doctrine are examined concerning palaeogeophysics and celestial mechanics. The research predicted secular decrease of the Earth's flattening and secular acceleration of the motion of the Moon and of the planets. The numerical values of this secular effect agree very well with the empirical facts. In all cases, the secular variation $\dot{\alpha}$ of the parameter α is the order of magnitude $\dot{\alpha}=-H_0 \alpha$ , where H0 is the instantaneous value of the Hubble constant: $H_0 =\left({\dot{R}/R} \right)_0 \approx \left( {0.5-1.0} \right) \times 10^{-10}a^{-1}$ . The relation of the secular consequences of the Mach–Einstein doctrine to those of Dirac's hypothesis on the expanding Earth, and to Darwin's theory of tidal friction are also discussed. (shrink)

Since the advent of Modern Physics in 1905, we observe an increasing activity of “interpreting” the new theories. We mention here the theories of Special Relativity, General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. However, similar activities for the theories of Classical Physics were not known. We ask for the reasons for the different ways to treat classical physics and modern physics. The answer, that we provide here is very surprising: the different treatments are based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the theories of (...) classical physics. (shrink)

In this paper, the main outlines of the discussions between Niels Bohr with Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, and Erwin Schrödinger during 1920–1927 are treated. From the formulation of quantum mechanics in 1925–1926 and wave mechanics in 1926, there emerged Born's statistical interpretation of the wave function in summer 1926, and on the basis of the quantum mechanical transformation theory—formulated in fall 1926 by Dirac, London, and Jordan—Heisenberg formulated the uncertainty principle in early 1927. At the Volta Conference in Como in (...) September 1927 and at the fifth Solvay Conference in Brussels the following month, Bohr publicly enunciated his complementarity principle, which had been developing in his mind for several years. The Bohr-Einstein discussions about the consistency and completeness of qnautum mechanics and of physical theory as such—formally begun in October 1927 at the fifth Solvay Conference and carried on at the sixth Solvay Conference in October 1930—were continued during the next decades. All these aspects are briefly summarized. (shrink)

Much speculation on the sources of Duhem's historical interests fails to account for the major shifts in these interests: neither his belief in the continuous development of physics nor his Catholicism, when his Church was encouraging the study of generally Aristotelian scholastic thought, led to any interest in mediaeval science before 1904. Equally, his own claim that he was merely testing his views on the nature of physical theory is easily squared only with earlier work with no trace of mediaeval (...) science. Behind this discontinuity lies a major crisis. Though not a positivist, Duhem had based all his work on assumptions acceptable to positivists. One of these, the sterility of the Middle Ages, was refuted by his chance discovery of evidence of genuine mediaeval science in the autumn of 1903, but that left the doctrine of scholastic sterility intact. (shrink)

The ArgumentCarl Gottfried Neumann was born in Königsberg, Prussia, in 1832 and died in Leipzig in 1925. His father was the physicist Franz Neumann, notable for his contributions not only to the study of electricity and magnetism but also to the development of physics education in nineteenth-century Germany. Carl Neumann studied at the University of Königsberg and received his doctorate in 1855 with a work on the application of elliptic integrals to mechanics. In 1858 he became Privatdozent, and in 1863 (...) Professor of Mathematics at Halle. Later that same year he moved to Basel, and in 1865 he became Ordinary Professor of Mathematics at Tübingen. Finally in 1868 he was appointed Professor of Mathematics at Leipzig, a post he held until he retired in 1911; of the two mathematics professorships at Leipzig, this was the one formerly held by F. A. Möbius, and it was officially devoted to “the higher mathematics, especially physics”. So Neumann's academic career, along with his role as one of the founding editors of the Mathematische Annalen beginning in 1869, can be seen as reflecting the enormous advance in mathematical sophistication that German physics underwent in the latter part of the nineteenth century. (shrink)

In French mechanical treatises of the nineteenth century, Newton’s second law of motion was frequently derived from a relativity principle. The origin of this trend is found in ingenious arguments by Huygens and Laplace, with intermediate contributions by Euler and d’Alembert. The derivations initially relied on Galilean relativity and impulsive forces. After Bélanger’s Cours de mécanique of 1847, they employed continuous forces and a stronger relativity with respect to any commonly impressed motion. The name “principle of relative motions” and the (...) very idea of using this principle as a constructive tool were born in this context. The consequences of Poincaré’s and Einstein’s awareness of this approach are analyzed. Lastly, the legitimacy and significance of a relativity-based derivation of Newton’s second law are briefly discussed in a more philosophical vein. (shrink)

In their paper, ‘When are thought experiments poor ones?’ (Peijnenburg and David Atkinson, 2003, Journal of General Philosophy of Science 34, 305-322.), Jeanne Peijnenburg and David Atkinson argue that most, if not all, philosophical thought experiments are “poor” ones with “disastrous consequences” and that they share the property of being poor with some (but not all) scientific thought experiments. Noting that unlike philosophy, the sciences have the resources to avoid the disastrous consequences, Peijnenburg and Atkinson come to the conclusion that (...) the use of thought experiments in science is in general more successful than in philosophy and that instead of concocting more “recherché” thought experiments, philosophy should try to be more empirical. In this comment I will argue that Peijnenburg’s and Atkinson’s view on thought experiments is based on a misleading characterization of both, the dialectical situation in philosophy as well as the history of physics. By giving an adequate account of what the discussion in contemporary philosophy is about, we will arrive at a considerably different evaluation of philosophical thought experiments. For I am convinced that we now find ourselves at an altogether decisive turning point in philosophy, and that we are objectively justified in considering that an end has come to the fruitless conflict of systems. We are already at the present time, in my opinion, in possession of methods which make any such conflict in principle unnecessary. What is now required is their resolute application. (Schlick, ‘The Turning Point in Philosophy’, 1930/1959, p. 54). (shrink)

Elsewhere I have tried to provide the justification of both the irreducible distinction of science and philosophy and their inevitable complementarity. Unlike empirical science, philosophy has no limit whatever as far as its possible objects are concerned. To say that there is no limit whatever to the possible objects of philosophy is to say that, strictly speaking, it has no object at all and must find its object outside itself, that is, in common sense knowledge and the natural and human (...) sciences. Against the background of this conception, the paper argues that philosophy of science, as a critical reflection on common sense knowledge and the natural or human sciences, inherits from philosophy in general this two-faced Janus nature, which in the philosophy of science shapes the epistemological status of the discipline in an even more prominent way. To show this in detail, the paper enunciates eleven theses that derive from the intimate connection of unity and distinction that exists between philosophy of science on the one hand and the particular and specialized scientific knowledge on the other. (shrink)

On the relation between experiment and thought experiment in the natural sciences. To understand the reciprocal autonomy and complementarity of thought and real experiment, it is necessary to distinguish between a ‘positive’ (empirical or formal) and a transcendental perspective. Empirically and formally, real and thought experiments are indistinguishable. However, from a reflexive-transcendental viewpoint thought experiment is at the same time irreducible and complementary to real experiment. This is due to the fact that the hypothetical-anticipatory moment is in principle irreducible to (...) physical reality—even though it refers to physical reality and is bound with the empirical use of our understanding. The presence of counterfactuals is the condition of the possibility for thought experiments to become in principle real ones, by means of a series of technical realisations that gradually approximate the idealisations that they contain. (shrink)

Summary Based on Clausius’ phrasing of a “transformational content” and the resulting 2nd law of thermodynamics, I demonstrated that Gilbert Simondon’s On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects is historically situated at the threshold of understanding open systems thermodynamics and the related concepts of balance. Furthermore, I showed that Gestalt theory, as represented by Wolfgang Köhler, at least reproduced, if not partially anticipated or even prepared this development of 20th century thinking. Finally, I gave some short examples of how (...) Simondon applied the figure/ground distinction to human perception, memory, and a general theory of becoming and I introduced his proposal to analyse “the grounds” just as thoroughly as the laws of figuration. (shrink)

Whether meaning is compositional has been a major issue in linguistics and formal philosophy of language for the last 2 decades. Semantic holism is widely and plausibly considered as an objection to the principle of semantic compositionality therein. It comes as a surprise that the holistic peculiarities of scientific language have been rarely addressed in formal accounts so far, given that semantic holism has its roots in the philosophy of science. For this reason, a model-theoretic approach to semantic holism in (...) the language of science is presented here. This approach preserves compositionality to a large extent. *Received September 2009; revised February 2010. †To contact the author, please write to: Seminar for Philosophy, Logic, and Theory of Science, Hauspostfach 49, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich 80539, Germany; e-mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

On Choice of Time Metric. What criteria ought to be satisfied by those observable processes which, accompanied by a function assigning values to intervals of that processes, serve as the standard for measurement of time? In how far do the criteria which can reasonably be established admit of an unambigous definition of time metric? That are the questions to which I have addressed myself in the paper. Peter Janich has aimed at solving the problem with careful avoidance of any reference (...) to physical theory. Although this paper owes a great deal to his ‘Protophysik der Zeit’, reasons will be ad-vanced that it is in principle impossible to give a foundation of time metric without any reference to physical theory. It follows that taking results of physical theory into account is unavoidable as far as a definite decision concerning the choice of time metric is aspired. At first sight reference to law-like assertions on the duration of temporal intervals appears to be paradoxical for it means to take something which originally ought to be submitted to experimental test as the standard for measurement. Poincaré is fairly conscious of this problem, yet explicitly acknowledges that there is a mutual relationship between definition of time metric and physical theory. It will be shown that this kind of mutual relationship which even might be termed as circular does not void physical theory of empirical content. Thus in the final part I am concerned to free the position which recommends reference to physical theory from its paradoxical image in order to advance a conventionalist account as a sceptical, but nevertheless fully satisfying solution. (shrink)

This paper is intended to sketch the definition of a methodological tool -- the notion of a format of representation -- for the study of scientific theorising. One of its main assumption is that a philosophical study of theorising needs to pay attention to other types of units of analysis than the traditional ones, namely, theories and models approached in a logical and structural way, since scientific reasoning is always led on concrete representational devices and depends upon their specific properties. (...) The notion of a format is intended to characterise the differences between various types of representational devices, in terms of the inferences they enable cognitive agents to draw. (shrink)

The principle of least action, which has so successfully been applied to diverse fields of physics looks back at three centuries of philosophical and mathematical discussions and controversies. They could not explain why nature is applying the principle and why scalar energy quantities succeed in describing dynamic motion. When the least action integral is subdivided into infinitesimal small sections each one has to maintain the ability to minimise. This however has the mathematical consequence that the Lagrange function at a given (...) point of the trajectory, the dynamic, available energy generating motion, must itself have a fundamental property to minimize. Since a scalar quantity, a pure number, cannot do that, energy must fundamentally be dynamic and time oriented for a consistent understanding. It must have vectorial properties in aiming at a decrease of free energy per state (which would also allow derivation of the second law of thermodynamics). Present physics is ignoring that and applying variation calculus as a formal mathematical tool to impose a minimisation of scalar assumed energy quantities for obtaining dynamic motion. When, however, the dynamic property of energy is taken seriously it is fundamental and has also to be applied to quantum processes. A consequence is that particle and wave are not equivalent, but the wave (distributed energy) follows from the first (concentrated energy). Information, provided from the beginning, an information self-image of matter, is additionally needed to recreate the particle from the wave, shaping a “dynamic” particle-wave duality. It is shown that this new concept of a “dynamic” quantum state rationally explains quantization, the double slit experiment and quantum correlation, which has not been possible before. Some more general considerations on the link between quantum processes, gravitation and cosmological phenomena are also advanced. (shrink)