Related papers: A Sense of Crisis: Physics in the fin-de-siecle Er…

By 1930, at a time when the new physics based on relativity and quantum theory had reached a state of consolidation, problems of a foundational kind began to abound. Physicists began to speak of a new "crisis" and envisage a forthcoming…

We review, in a historical perspective, developments in physics which led to the emergence of unifying ideas and theories. Some attention is paid to the theoretical programme that started in the second decade of the XXth century and whose…

A goal of physics is to understand the greatest possible breadth of natural phenomena in terms of the most economical set of basic concepts. However, as the understanding of physics has developed historically, its pedagogy and language have…

At the beginning of the 20th century the classical electron theory (or, perhaps more appropriately, the classical electromagnetic mass theory) - the first physical theory that dared ask the question of what inertia and mass were - was…

The radical changes in the concepts and approach in Physics at the turn of the Nineteenth century were so deep, that is acknowledged as a revolution. However, in 1970 Thomas Kuhn's careful reconstruction of the researches on the black body…

In the last 175 years, the physical understanding of nature has seen a revolutionary change. Until about 1850, Newton's theory and the mechanical world view derived from it provided the dominant view of the physical world, later…

Physics was in crisis at the beginning of the twentieth century because the newborn Maxwell's electromagnetism defied mechanistic preconceptions. Albert Einstein understood that the solution to the crisis required an audacious reworking of…

We argue that most advances in science and technology during the past and the present centuries rely on modern physics concepts developed in the early $20$th century. The reliance is so profound that any improvement of literacy of science…

Along with weaving together observations, experiments, and theoretical constructs into a coherent mesh of understanding of the world around us, physics over its past five centuries has continuously refined the base concepts on which the…

We recount the successful long career of classical physics, from Newton to Einstein, which was based on the philosophy of scientific realism. Special emphasis is given to the changing status and number of ontological entitities and…

Relativity, Quantum Mechanics and Chaos theory are three of the most significant scientific advances of the 20th Century - each fundamentally changing our understanding of the physical universe. The authors ask why the UK National…

At the end of the 19th century light was regarded as an electromagnetic wave propagating in a material medium called ether. The speed c appearing in Maxwell's wave equations was the speed of light with respect to the ether. Therefore,…

For several decades there has been no breakthrough in fundamental physics as revolutionary as relativity and quantum physics despite the amazing advancement of applied physics and technology. By discussing several examples of what physics…

Matter waves were discovered in the early 20th century from their wavelength, predicted by DeBroglie, Planck's constant divided by the particle's momentum, that is, lmw = h/mv. But, the failure to obtain a reasonable theory for the matter…

In the period from about 1890 to 1915 an interdisciplinary and unifying research programme known as "cosmical physics" attracted much scientific and public attention. It typically included aspects of the earth sciences (such as magnetic…

Without a doubt many problems in physics arise as a consequence of our philosophical conception of the world. In this contribution however we endeavor to alleviate this scenario by putting forward a philosophical approach under which some…

Metaphysics is the science of being and asks the question ``What really exists?'' The answer to this question has been sought for by mankind since the beginning of recorded time. In the past 2500 years there have been many answers to this…

The evolution of theoretical physics in the XX century differs significantly from that in XVII-XIX centuries. While continuous progress is observed for theoretical physics in XVII-XIX centuries, modern physics contains many questions that…

Laymen and sometimes even physicists think of natural sciences, in particular of theoretical and mathematical physics often as subjects, which unfold according to an intrinsic logical pattern, with the limitations being set only by the…

The discovery of quantum mechanics at the beginning of the last century led to a revolution of the physical world view. Modern experiments, made possible by new techniques on the border of the classical and the quantum regimes offer new…