Most recent work on the nature of experiment in physics has focused on "big science"--the large-scale research addressed in Andrew Pickering's Constructing Quarks and Peter Galison's How Experiments End. This book examines small-scale experiment in physics, in particular the relation between theory and practice. The contributors focus on interactions among the people, materials, and ideas involved in experiments--factors that have been relatively neglected in science studies. The first half of the book is primarily philosophical, with contributions from Andrew Pickering, Peter (...) Galison, Hans Radder, Brian Baigrie, and Yves Gingras. Among the issues they address are the resources deployed by theoreticians and experimenters, the boundaries that constrain theory and practice, the limits of objectivity, the reproducibility of results, and the intentions of researchers. The second half is devoted to historical case studies in the practice of physics from the early nineteenth to the early twentieth century. These chapters address failed as well as successful experimental work ranging from Victorian astronomy through Hertz's investigation of cathode rays to Trouton's attempt to harness the ether. Contributors to this section are Jed Z. Buchwald, Giora Hon, Margaret Morrison, Simon Schaffer, and Andrew Warwick. With a lucid introduction by Ian Hacking, and original articles by noted scholars in the history and philosophy of science, this book is poised to become a significant source on the nature of small-scale experiment in physics. (shrink)

Thomas S. Kuhn's singular voice was stilled by cancer on June 17, 1996, some 49 years after his initial encounters with past science had drawn him into a career in the history and philosophy of science. One of the most widely-read and influential academics of the 20th century, Kuhn was educated at Harvard University, where he received an S.B. in Physics in 1943 and a Ph.D. in the subject in 1949. He remained there until 1956, first as a Junior Fellow (...) in the Society of Fellows from 1948 to 1951, when he in effect retrained himself as a historian of science, and then as an Assistant Professor of General Education and History of Science. He joined the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, in 1956, becoming Professor of History of Science in 1961. From 1964 to 1979 he was on the faculty of the History of Science Program of Princeton University, and from 1972 to 1979 also a member of the Institute for Advanced Study. He moved to the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy of Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1979, where he became Professor Emeritus in 1991. He was President of the History of Science Society in 1968—70 and of the Philosophy of Science Association in 1988–90. He received the George Sarton Medal of the History of Science Society in 1982 and the John Desmond Bernal Award of the Society for the Social Studies of Science in 1983. (shrink)

Summary Descartes's model for the invisible world has long seemed confined to explanations of known phenomena, with little if anything to offer concerning the empirical investigation of novel processes. Although he did perform experiments, the links between them and the Cartesian model remain difficult to pin down, not least because there are so very few. Indeed, the only account that Descartes ever developed which invokes his model in relation to both quantitative implications and to experiments is the one that he (...) provided for the rainbow. There he described in considerable detail the appearances of colours generated by means of prisms in specific circumstances. We have reproduced these experiments with careful attention to Descartes's requirements. The results provide considerable insight into the otherwise fractured character of his printed discovery narrative. By combining reproduction with attention to the rhetorical structure of Descartes's presentation, we can show that he worked his model in conjunction with experiments to reach a fully quantitative account of the rainbow, including its colours as well as its geometry. In this one instance at least, Descartes produced just the sort of explanatory novelties that the young Newton later did in optics. That Descartes's results in respect to colour are in hindsight specious is of course irrelevant. (shrink)

Incommensurability between successive scientific theories—the impossibility of empirical evidence dictating the choice between them—was Thomas Kuhn's most controversial proposal. Toward defending it, he directed much effort over his last 30 years into formulating precise conditions under which two theories would be undeniably incommensurable with one another. His first step, in the late 1960s, was to argue that incommensurability must result when two theories involve incompatible taxonomies. The problem he then struggled with, never obtaining a solution that he found entirely satisfactory, (...) was how to extend this initial line of thought to sciences like physics in which taxonomy is not so transparently dominant as it is, for example, in chemistry. This paper reconsiders incommensurability in the light of examples in which evidence historically did and did not carry over continuously from old laws and theories to new ones. The transition from ray to wave optics early in the nineteenth century, we argue, is especially informative in this regard. The evidence for the theory of polarization within ray optics did not carry over to wave optics, so that this transition can be regarded as a prototypical case of discontinuity of evidence, and hence of incommensurability in the way Kuhn wanted. Yet the evidence for classic geometric optics did carry over to wave optics, notwithstanding the fundamental conceptual readjustment that Fresnel's wave theory required. (shrink)

This book brings together cutting-edge writing by more than twenty leading authorities on the history of physics from the seventeenth century to the present day. By presenting a wide diversity of studies in a single volume, it provides authoritative introductions to scholarly contributions that have tended to be dispersed in journals and books not easily accessible to the general reader. While the core thread remains the theories and experimental practices of physics, the Handbook contains chapters on other dimensions that have (...) their place in any rounded history. These include the role of lecturing and textbooks in the communication of knowledge, the contribution of instrument-makers and instrument-making companies in providing for the needs of both research and lecture demonstrations, and the growing importance of the many interfaces between academic physics, industry, and the military. (shrink)

Kirchhoff’s 1882 theory of optical diffraction forms the centerpiece in the long-term development of wave optics, one that commenced in the 1820s when Fresnel produced an empirically successful theory based on a reinterpretation of Huygens’ principle, but without working from a wave equation. Then, in 1856, Stokes demonstrated that the principle was derivable from such an equation albeit without consideration of boundary conditions. Kirchhoff’s work a quarter century later marked a crucial, and widely influential, point for he produced Fresnel’s results (...) by means of Green’s theorem and function under specific boundary conditions. In the late 1880s, Poincaré uncovered an inconsistency between Kirchhoff’s conditions and his solution, one that seemed to imply that waves should not exist at all. Researchers nevertheless continued to use Kirchhoff’s theory—even though Rayleigh, and much later Sommerfeld, developed a different and mathematically consistent formulation that, however, did not match experimental data better than Kirchhoff’s theory. After all, Kirchhoff’s formula worked quite well in a specific approximation regime. Finally, in 1964, Marchand and Wolf employed the transformation of Kirchhoff’s surface integral that had been developed by Maggi and Rubinowicz for other purposes. The result yielded a consistent boundary condition that, while introducing a species of discontinuity, nevertheless rescued the essential structure of Kirchhoff’s original formulation from Poincaré’s paradox. (shrink)

Debate among scientists is frequently hampered by intense difficulties in communicating and translating their viewpoints. This well-known fact illustrates the role of unarticulated core knowledge in the activities of sientific communities. But it has been little noticed that the issue afficts not just written science, but especially traditions of experimental activity and their products, including instruments and techniques. The question is addressed on the basis of examples from the history of optics and electromagnetism - Fresnel and Brewster, Maxwell and Hertz (...) - and texts from Kuhn's Structure. Particular attention is paid to interrelations between succeeding theories, and to the notorious problem of theory-choice. (shrink)

In the fall of 1967 I entered Princeton as a Freshman intending to major in physics but interested as well in history. The catalog listed a course on the history of science, taught by a Professor Thomas Kuhn with the assistance of Michael Mahoney that seemed nicely to fit both interests. The course proved to be peculiarly intense for something about what was, after all, obsolete science as, each week, hundreds of pages of arcana from the distant past had to (...) be absorbed. Professor Kuhn would pace back and forth in lecture, smoking intensely and talking rapidly to an elaborate outline drawn on the board at the beginning of each class. In tutorial, Mahoney (who passed away in 2009) developed Kuhn's points, forcing .. (shrink)

Despite the substantial and important differences between Achinstein and Laudan, many historians of science would see little distinction between them. Both of these philosophers believe and strongly maintain that argumentation was a central aspect of the historical events involved in the establishment of wave optics. Contemporary historians would prefer to ask whether argumentation did much work at all - whether, that is, anyone ever actually persuaded anyone else to change a belief. I will attempt briefly to show that issues of (...) skilled knowledge, tacit understanding, and novel instrumentation, rather than straightforward assertions based on the overt structure of the contending theories, offer a better way to understand what took place. (shrink)