Lectures
on the History of Physics
1. Introduction
As
a start, I would like to point out to you a few
things which might explain my interest in history
and philosophy in general. You have all heard the
slogan "Two Cultures," the contrast and
conflict between sciences on one hand and art on
the other. However, in Hungary, where I come from,
there was only "One Culture." The Hungarian
word for science is "tudomány." It
corresponds to the word "Wissenschaft" in
German. These expressions designate one, all-embracing
science, including everything from mathematics to
music. The Hungarian Academy of Sciences has, at
present, eight sections: languages, literary sciences,
social and historical sciences, mathematics and physics,
agricultural sciences, technical sciences, chemistry
and biology, and a section on musical folklore under
the well-know composer Zoltán Kodály,
who recently visited this country and taught in a
music summer school at Dartmouth College. Incidentally,
we have also in our country at least one institution,
the American Academy of Arts and Science, which emphasizes
the union, rather than the contrast, between Arts
and Science. However, as you know, this is an exception.
Our National Academy of Science is concerned only
with science, but not with the arts.
My
interest in philosophy of science was kindled by
Poincaré's books. It was reinforced by
the requirement for the Ph.D. degree in Vienna, which
included philosophy. My finals consiswted of two
one-hour exams in physics, which was my major, a
single one-hour exam in mathematics, my minor, and
two one-hour exams in philosophy. These requirements
forced one to study philosophy and to consider science
in general, physical and mathematics in particular,
in a more general context.
I managed somehow to take both one-hour exams in
philosophy of science, since I had a sort of allergy
to some parts of traditional philosophy. Fortunately,
a friend of mine, Herbert Feigl, who is now a distinguished
philosopher of science himself (Professor of Philosophy
and Director of the Minnesota Center for Philosophy
of Science at the University of Minnesota) tutored
me. This way I did not have to read voluminous books
on traditional philosophy.
One
of the philosophers who examined me was M. Schlick.
He was the founder of the "Vienna Circle" of
logical positivists, also called logical empiricists.
This direction goes back to Hume, Comte, and Mach.
The circle had weekly sessions on philosophy of science,
which were very interesting, but sometimes quite
baffling, to me then. For example, there was a discussion
about a book by Herman Weyl, "Was ist Materie" (What
is Matter). There was an expression "es gibt" (there
is). I remember a spirited discussion about the possible
meaning of that expression. Being a young student
of science, I did not at that time appreciate the
significance of such semantic discussions. Later
on, I realized that the precise meaning of statements
in philosophy can be very important. Still, I always
remembered a saying by Goethe in "Faust": "Wo
die Begriffe fehlen, stellt ein Wort zur rechten
Zeit sich ein" (When the concepts are missing,
a word shows up). Clearly, a new word is no substitute
for a new concept!
2. History of General History
After
this bit of autobiographical introduction, I would
like to discuss very briefly and in big historical
jumps the "History of History" and the "History
of History of Science."
History may be defined as a methodical reconstruction
of the past of mankind. From Herodotos to Thucydides,
from Livius to Tacitus, there was a gradually increasing
sophistication leading away from the naive, purely
narrative type of history. However, even with some
sophistication, history was only an uncritical description
of separated human events (like battles) and actions
(by kings or other leaders).
General
history, taking account of the dynamic forces emanating
from the structure of a society, started
only in the eighteenth century and actually developed
only in the nineteenth century. Voltaire's "Siècle
de Louis XIV" was, perhaps , the earliest general
or cultural history. Gibbon, at least in some parts
of his work, was another early bird. Sismondi, Thierry,
and Michelet emphasized the role of communes and
the rise of the "Third Estate" in medieval
history. The British "Whig" historians,
Hallam, Grote, and Macauley considered history as
a successive unfolding of political liberty. Carlyle
vainly tried to turn the clock back with his hero
worship, as exemplified in his "History of the
French Revolution."
Influenced
by the philosophers, Comte and Spencer, Taine and
Buckle were, perhaps, the first cultural
historians. They emphasize social factors, ideas,
and idealogies. Hegel and Marx catalyzed the dialectic
materialism style of history, with all its excesses.
However, they rightly emphasized that in an age of
quickly changing social and industrial development
in particular, and even more generally, the sociological
and industrial factors played very important roles
in all human endeavors. Lecky, following Buckle,
emphasized (in his "History of the Rise and
Influence of Rationalism in Europe" and in his "History
of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne")
the "practical, active, and social sides of
history, in contrast to the "intellectual and
speculative" side, as exemplified by Leslie
Stephens' "English Thought in the Eighteenth
Century." Of course, all these aspects of history
are complementary and should enter together into
a really general history.
Grand
synthesis in history cannot be practiced without
analytic specialization. As a matter of fact, analytic
specialization is a pre-condition for a successful
cultural synthesis. The great attention to innumerable
details, documented by a large number of footnotes,
was the style set by Ranke and, perhaps to a lesser
extent, also by Mommsen, who for his monumental "History
of the Roman Empire" received the literary Nobel
prize. Detailed treatments of shorter epochs on history
have been previously pioneered by Voltaire and Gibbon
and developed by Macauley (famous third chapter of "History
of England"), Taine ("Ancien Regime"),
de Coulange ("La Cité Antique"),
Dill ("Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius"),
although these cannot compete with Ranke in the number
of footnotes!
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Of
course, a detailed study of any aspects in history
is justified only if it can be used
in the grand synthesis. Details which cannot be woven
into the canvas of general history are clearly not
significant. In other words, the details of any specialized
historical study must be "embeddable" in
the whole picture one attempts to paint, like apiece
of mosaic is "embeddable" in the whole.
This "principle of embedding" is valid
for any human endeavor and activity. Any human
activity is the more important the more it interacts
with
and is related to other human activities. The abstract
form of this principle goes back, perhaps, to Protagoras
of Abdera, one of the first relativists. More concretely
and recently, it has been applied by Felix Klein,
David Hilbert, and John von Neumann to a relative
valuation of different branches of mathematics
and very recently by Alvin M. Weinberg to a relative
valuation of different sciences.
The grand synthesis can be characterized also,
again as all human endeavor, and more generally
as all
the nature around us, as a result of an evolution.
This view is, of course, only valid if one "averages" over
a longer time period. Over a short period, evolution
looks more like the envelope or average of revolutions.
About the Author
by
Dr. Eugene Guth
