- Lincoln, Massachusetts, United States
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Wissenschaftlicher Briefwechsel mit Bohr, Einstein, Heisenberg u.a. Scientific Correspondence with Bohr, Einstein, Heisenberg, a.o. Wolfgang Pauli. Vol. 3, 1940-1949. Karl von Meyenn, Ed. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1993. lxiv, 1070 pp., illus. OM 216 or OS 1,684.80 or SFr 212. Sources in the Histor...more
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Truth and Objectivity, part 1: Irony: Rethinking Objectivity . Allan Megill, Ed. Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 1994. x, 342 pp., illus. $45.95; paper, $15.95. Post-Contemporary Interventions. Reprinted from Annals of Scholarship, vol. 8, no. 3/4, and vol. 9, no. 1/2.; Telling the Truth About...more
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‘The Forman thesis’, published in 1972, is the claim that in the years following Germany’s defeat in the First World War, a widespread sense of crisis, marked by anti-scientific, and Spengler-inspired anti-causal, attitudes among educated... more
‘The Forman thesis’, published in 1972, is the claim that in the years following Germany’s defeat in the First World War, a widespread sense of crisis, marked by anti-scientific, and Spengler-inspired anti-causal, attitudes among educated Germans, ‘led physicists to ardently hope for, actively search for, and willingly embrace an acausal quantum mechanics’. This thesis has been affirmed by few historians and fewer philosophers, but, paradoxically, has nonetheless remained a nagging question for all concerned with the origins and epistemic import of quantum mechanics. Here its author explains the tenacity of that thesis as arising from a continuing attachment by historians and philosophers of science to the myth of disciplinarity, thereby connecting continuities in the 50-year reception history of the Forman thesis with ideological discontinuities created by the broadest and deepest cultural reorientation of the past three centuries, the replacement of the modern outlook and its presuppositions by postmodern.
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Etude des origines militaires et techniques du maser, considere comme le gadget ou l'artefact de l'electronique quantique. L'A. montre que ce systeme physique a ete cree dans le cadre institutionnel de Laboratoire de radiation... more
Etude des origines militaires et techniques du maser, considere comme le gadget ou l'artefact de l'electronique quantique. L'A. montre que ce systeme physique a ete cree dans le cadre institutionnel de Laboratoire de radiation de l'universite de Columbia dans le but premier d'augmenter la securite physique des Etats-Unis
Research Interests: Physics and Philosophy
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Contents: 1. The Physical Review: Then and Now. 2. Hundred Years of The Physical Review 3. The Early Years 1893-1930 4. Atomic Physics 5. Nuclear Physics. 6. Statistical Physics, Integrable, and Chaotic Systems. 7. Gravity Physics and... more
Contents: 1. The Physical Review: Then and Now. 2. Hundred Years of The Physical Review 3. The Early Years 1893-1930 4. Atomic Physics 5. Nuclear Physics. 6. Statistical Physics, Integrable, and Chaotic Systems. 7. Gravity Physics and Cosmology. 8. Cosmic Radiation: Discoveries Reported in The Physical Review 9. Condensed Matter. 10. Plasma Physics. 11. Elementary Particle Physics Experiments. 12. A Century of Particle Theory. 13. Science and Technology. 14. Quantum Mechanics: Does the Wave Function Provide a Complete Description of Physical Reality?
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Historiographic Doubts: Physics and Beyond . Encounters and Conversations. Werner Heisenberg. A translation by Arnold J. Pomerans of Der Teil und das Ganze: Gesprache im Umkreis der Atomphysik (Piper, Munich, 1969; DM 24). Harper and Row, New York, 1971. xx, 250 pp. $7.95. World Perspectives, vol...more
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ABSTRACT
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Historical studies of the role of military agencies and considerations of military power in the promotion of science and technology have burgeoned since the early 1980s. Initially, such studies focused chiefly on the enormous expansion of... more
Historical studies of the role of military agencies and considerations of military power in the promotion of science and technology have burgeoned since the early 1980s. Initially, such studies focused chiefly on the enormous expansion of physical research in the United States in the two decades following the Second World War. More recently it has become clear - and this collection of essays contributes importantly to that recognition - that a decisive influence of military factors upon the development of science and technology is by no means limited to the United States or to that one period. The great strength of this collection - apart from the quality and originality of the contributions - is the range of the national military and scientific cultures considered: Argentina, Britain, France, USA, and, especially, Germany and Spain.