Author: Jean Perrin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Brownian movements
Languages : en
Pages : 110

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Author: Raghav Seth
Publisher:
ISBN: 0190098023
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 469

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Book Description
Between 1905 and 1913, French physicist Jean Perrin's experiments on Brownian motion ostensibly put a definitive end to the long debate regarding the real existence of molecules, proving the atomic theory of matter. While Perrin's results had a significant impact at the time, later examination of his experiments questioned whether he really gained experimental access to the molecular realm. The experiments were successful in determining the mean kinetic energy of the granules of Brownian motion; however, the values for molecular magnitudes Perrin inferred from them simply presupposed that the granule mean kinetic energy was the same as the mean molecular kinetic energy in the fluid in which the granules move. This stipulation became increasingly questionable in the years between 1908 and 1913, as significantly lower values for these magnitudes were obtained from other experimental results like alpha-particle emissions, ionization, and Planck's blackbody radiation equation. In this case study in the history and philosophy of science, George E. Smith and Raghav Seth here argue that despite doubts, Perrin's measurements were nevertheless exemplars of theory-mediated measurement-the practice of obtaining values for an inaccessible quantity by inferring them from an accessible proxy via theoretical relationships between them. They argue that it was actually Perrin more than any of his contemporaries who championed this approach during the years in question. The practice of theory-mediated measurement in physics had a long history before 1900, but the concerted efforts of Perrin, Rutherford, Millikan, Planck, and their colleagues led to the central role this form of evidence has had in microphysical research ever since. Seth and Smith's study thus replaces an untenable legend with an account that is not only tenable, but more instructive about what the evidence did and did not show.

Author: Mary Jo Nye
Publisher: Elsevier
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Author: Mary Jo Nye
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Author: Mary Jo Nye
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Atomic theory
Languages : en
Pages : 746

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Author: William Demopoulos
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674237579
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
A renowned philosopherÕs final work, illuminating how the logical empiricist tradition has failed to appreciate the role of actual experiments in forming its philosophy of science. The logical empiricist treatment of physics dominated twentieth-century philosophy of science. But the logical empiricist tradition, for all it accomplished, does not do justice to the way in which empirical evidence functions in modern physics. In his final work, the late philosopher of science William Demopoulos contends that philosophers have failed to provide an adequate epistemology of science because they have failed to appreciate the tightly woven character of theory and evidence. As a consequence, theory comes apart from evidence. This trouble is nowhere more evident than in theorizing about particle and quantum physics. Arguing that we must consider actual experiments as they have unfolded across history, Demopoulos provides a new epistemology of theories and evidence, albeit one that stands on the shoulders of giants. On Theories finds clarity in Isaac NewtonÕs suspicion of mere Òhypotheses.Ó NewtonÕs methodology lies in the background of Jean PerrinÕs experimental investigations of molecular reality and of the subatomic investigations of J. J. Thomson and Robert Millikan. Demopoulos extends this account to offer novel insights into the distinctive nature of quantum reality, where a logico-mathematical reconstruction of Bohrian complementarity meets John Stewart BellÕs empirical analysis of EinsteinÕs Òlocal realism.Ó On Theories ultimately provides a new interpretation of quantum probabilities as themselves objectively representing empirical reality.

Author: Albert Einstein
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691122288
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
After 1905, physics would never be the same. In those 12 months, Einstein shattered many cherished scientific beliefs with five great papers that would establish him as the world's leading physicist. On their 100th anniversary, this book brings those papers together in an accessible format.

Author: Jean Perrin
Publisher: Franklin Classics
ISBN:
Category : Atoms
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Author: Peter Achinstein
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199755736
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
The essays in this volume address three fundamental questions in the philosophy of science: What is required for some fact to be evidence for a scientific hypothesis? What does it mean to say that a scientist or a theory explains a phenomenon? Should scientific theories that postulate "unobservable" entities such as electrons be construed realistically as aiming to correctly describe a world underlying what is directly observable, or should such theories be understood as aiming to correctly describe only the observable world? Distinguished philosopher of science Peter Achinstein provides answers to each of these questions in essays written over a period of more than 40 years. The present volume brings together his important previously published essays, allowing the reader to confront some of the most basic and challenging issues in the philosophy of science, and to consider Achinstein's many influential contributions to the solution of these issues. He presents a theory of evidence that relates this concept to probability and explanation; a theory of explanation that relates this concept to an explaining act as well as to the different ways in which explanations are to be evaluated; and an empirical defense of scientific realism that invokes both the concept of evidence and that of explanation.

Author: Jeffrey Huw Williams
Publisher: Morgan & Claypool Publishers
ISBN: 1643272926
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 146

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Book Description
It was not until 1971 that the authority for defining scientific units, the General Conference of Weights and Measures got around to defining the unit that is the basis of chemistry (the mole, or the quantity of something). Yet for all this tardiness in putting the chemical sciences on a sound quantitative basis, chemistry is an old and venerable subject and one naturally asks the question, why? Well, the truth is that up until the mid-1920s, many physicists did not believe in the reality of molecules. Indeed, it was not until after the physics community had accepted Ernest Rutherford's 1913 solar-system-like model of the atom, and the quantum mechanical model of the coupling of electron spins in atoms that physicists started to take seriously the necessity of explaining the chemical changes that chemists had been observing, investigating and recording since the days of the alchemists.