Revisiting The Foundations Of Relativistic Physics

Revisiting the Foundations of Relativistic Physics

This book is for physicists, historians and philosophers of physics as well as students seeking an introduction to ongoing debates in relativistic and quantum physics. This title is unique in that: it comprises contributions by leading physicists, philosophers and historians of science; it covers the recent debates on the emergence of relativity and quantum theory; it includes chapters with an introductory character, comprehensible to students and science teachers; it can be used in graduate level courses in the history and philosophy of science; it strengthens the bonds between the communities of scientists, historians, and philosophers.

Revisiting the Foundations of Relativistic Physics

The Reception of the Galilean Science of Motion in Seventeenth-Century Europe

This book collects contributions by some of the leading scholars working on seventeenth-century mechanics and the mechanical philosophy. Together, the articles provide a broad and accurate picture of the fortune of Galileo's theory of motion in Europe and of the various physical, mathematical, and ontological arguments that were used in favour and against it. Were Galileo's contemporaries really aware of what Westfall has described as "the incompatibility between the demands of mathematical mechanics and the needs of mechanical philosophy"? To what extent did Galileo's silence concerning the cause of free fall impede the acceptance of his theory of motion? Which methods were used, before the invention of the infinitesimal calculus, to check the validity of Galileo's laws of free fall and of parabolic motion? And what sort of experiments were invoked in favour or against these laws? These and related questions are addressed in this volume.