Faraday to Einstein: Constructing Meaning in Scientific Theories

ISBN-13: 9789024729975 / Angielski / Twarda / 1984 / 196 str.

Nancy J. Nersessian; N. J. Nersessian

Opis

Einstein often expressed the sentiment that "the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility," and that science is the means through which we comprehend it. However, nearly every one - including scientists - agrees that the concepts of modem physics are quite incomprehensible: They are both unintelligible to the educated lay-person and to the scientific community itself, where there is much dispute over the interpretation of even (and especially) the most basic concepts. There is, of course, almost universal agreement that modem science quite adequately accounts for and predicts events, i. e., that its calculations work better than those of classical physics; yet the concepts of science are supposed to be descriptive of 'the world' as well - they should enable us to comprehend it. So, it is asked, and needs tobe"asked: Has modem physics failed in an important respect? It failed with me as a physics student. I came to physics, as with most naIve students, out of a desire to know what the world is really like; in particular, to understand Einstein's conception of it. I thought I had grasped the concepts in classical mechanics, but with electrodynamics confusion set in and only increased with relativity and quantum mechanics. At that point I began even to doubt whether I had really understood the basic concepts of classical mechanics.

Spis treści

I. The Philosophical Situation: A Critical Appraisal.- 1: The ‘standard’ account of meaning.- 1.1 General characterization.- 1.1 The ‘double-language’ view.- 2: ‘Meaning variance’ and ‘incommensurability’.- 2.1 The ‘network’ view.- 2.2 Shipwrecked.- 2.3 Is there meaning after Feyerabend?.- II. The Scientific Situation: An Historical Analysis.- 3: Faraday’s ‘lines of force’.- 3.1 Initial conception.- 3.2 Electromagnetic rotations.- 3.3 Electromagnetic induction.- 3.4 Electrostatic induction.- 3.5 Magnetic induction.- 3.6 The aether.- 3.7 Summary: Faraday’s concept of field.- 4: Maxwell’s ‘Newtonian aether-field’.- 4.1 The “representative lines of force”.- 4.2 The method of “physical analogy”.- 4.3 The “physical lines of force”.- 4.4 ‘Mechanical’ to ‘dynamical’.- 4.5 Summary: Maxwell’s concept of field.- 5: Lorentz’ ‘non-Newtonian aether-field’.- 5.1 An enigmatic scientist.- 5.2 Rapprochement.- 5.3 The immobile aether.- 5.4 Lorentz’ interpretation of the ‘Lorentz transformations’.- 5.5 Summary: L’éther pour toujours.- 6: Einstein’s ‘field’.- 6.1 Critical reflections.- 6.2 ‘Electromagnetic field’ in the special theory.- 6.3 Introduction: The gravitational field concept.- III. The Making of Meaning: A Proposal.- 7: Meaning in scientific practice.- 7.1 Constructing the field concept.- 7.2 ‘Meaning schemata’ and commensurability.- Notes.