An Idiot's Fugitive Essays on Science: Methods, Criticism, Training, Circumstances

ISBN-13: 9781461381877 / Angielski / Miękka / 2011 / 654 str.

C. Truesdell

Opis

When, after the agreeable fatigues of solicitation, Mrs Millamant set out a long bill of conditions subject to which she might by degrees dwindle into a wife, Mirabell offered in return the condition that he might not thereby be beyond measure enlarged into a husband. With age and experience in research come the twin dangers of dwindling into a philosopher of science while being enlarged into a dotard. The philosophy of science, I believe, should not be the preserve of senile scientists and of teachers of philosophy who have themselves never so much as understood the contents of a textbook of theoretical physics, let alone done a bit of mathematical research or even enjoyed the confidence of a creating scientist. On the latter count I run no risk: Any reader will see that I am untrained (though not altogether unread) in classroom philosophy. Of no ignorance of mine do I boast, indeed I regret it, but neither do I find this one ignorance fatal here, for few indeed of the great philosophers to explicate whose works hodiernal professors of phil osophy destroy forests of pulp were themselves so broadly and specially trained as are their scholiasts. In attempt to palliate the former count I have chosen to collect works written over the past thirty years, some of them not published before, and I include only a few very recent essays."

Spis treści

I. Aims, Programs, and Methods.- 1. Experience, Theory, and Experiment (1955).- 2. The Field Viewpoint in Classical Physics.- 3. Modern Continuum Mechanics in Adolescence (1962).- 4. Purpose, Method, and Program of Nonlinear Continuum Mechanics.- 5. War, Socialism, and Quantum Mechanics.- 6. The Tradition of Elasticity.- 7. Statistical Mechanics and Continuum Mechanics (1973, 1979).- 8. Our Debt to the French Tradition: “Catastrophes” and Our Search for Structure Today (1978, 1981).- 9. Draw from the Model and Imitate the Antique (1979).- 10. The Role of Mathematics in Science as Exemplified by the Work of the Bernoullis and Euler (1979, 1981).- 11. Conceptual Analysis.- II. Criticism: Selected Reviews.- A. Writing and Texts for Living Science.- 12. A Comment on Scientific Writing (1954).- 13. Goldstein’s Classical Mechanics (1950).- 14. Murnaghan’s Finite Deformation of an Elastic Solid (1952).- 15. Novozhilov’s Foundations of the Nonlinear Theory of Elasticity (1953).- B. The light of History Upon the Present.- 16. Critical Problems in the History of Science (1961).- 17. Dugas’ Histoire de la Mécanique (1953).- 18. Jammer’s Concepts of Mass in Classical and Modern Physics (1963).- 19. Clagett’s The Science of Mechanics in the Middle Ages (1961).- 20. Stevin’s Works on Mechanics (1957).- 21. Dugas’ La Mécanique au XVIIeSiècle (1956).- 22. Costabel’s Leibniz and Dynamics (1975).- 23. John Bernoulli and L’Hôpital (1958).- 24. The Works of James Bernoulli (1973).- 25. Daniel Bernoulli’s Hydrodynamica (1960).- 26. Rouse & Ince’s History of Hydraulics (1959).- 27. Hankins’ Jean d’Alembert (1971).- 28. The Mathematical and Physical Papers of G. G. Stokes (1966).- 29. Gillmor’s Coulomb (1973).- 30. Timoshenko’s History of Strength of Materials (1953).- 31. Szabò’s Geschichte der mechanischen Prinzipien und ihrer wichtigsten Anwendungen (1979).- III. Biography and Circumstances.- 32. Genius Conquers and Despises the Establishment: Newton.- a. Newton’s Letters (1960, 1962).- b. Newton’s Mathematical Works (1973, 1977).- 33. Genius Turns the Establishment to Profit: Euler.- a. Euler’s Letters (1960/1977).- b. Euler’s Early Manuscripts on Mechanics (1967).- c. A Sample: Ten out of Seventy-three (1958/1981).- d. Leonard Euler, Supreme Geometer (1972, 1982).- 34. The Establishment Stifles Genius: Herapath and Waterston (1968, 1982).- 35. Genius and the Establishment at a Polite Standstill in the Modern University: Bateman (1976, 1981).- IV. Training.- 36. The Scholar’s Workshop and Tools (1970, 1976, 1981).- 37. Has the Private University a Future? (1976).- V. Philosophy?.- 38. Is there a Philosophy of Science? (1973).- 39. Suppesian Stews (1980/1981).- VI. Dirge.- 40. The Scholar: A Species Threatened by Professions (1972).- 41. The Computer: Ruin of Science and Threat to Mankind (1979/1982).- 42. Of All and of None (1964).- Index of Names Mentioned.