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The case-study teaching method has a long history (starting at least with Socrates), and wide current use in business schools, medical schools, law schools, and a variety of other disciplines. However, relatively little use is made of it in…
This article explores the overall geometric manner in which human beings make sense of the world around them by means of their physical theories; in particular, in what are nowadays called pregeometric pictures of Nature. In these, the…
In the standard model the mass of elementary particles is considered as a dynamical property emerging from their interaction with the Higgs field. We show that this assumption implies peculiar deviations from the law of universal…
Henri Poincare Saint Louis lecture, delivered on 24 September 1904 at the International Congress of Arts and Science, occupies a distinctive place in the pre history of twentieth century theoretical physics. In this text, Poincare…
In the 60s of the last century the few courses of History of physics in Physics degree were held by scholars who, apart from a few exceptions, did not have a specific research background in the field. Some activities, books, social…
In contrast to electrodynamics, Einstein's gravitation equations are not invariant with respect to a wide class of the mapping of field variables which leave equations of motion of test particles in a given coordinate system invariant. It…
An overview of the experimental and observational status in gravitational physics is given, both for the known tests of general relativity and Newtonian gravity, but also for the increasing number of results where these theories run into…
I briefly consider the Kuhnian notion of "paradigm shifts" applied to the history of mathematics and argue that the succession and intergenerational continuity of mathematical thought was undeservedly neglected in the historical studies. To…
We revisit Weyl's unified field theory, which arose in 1918, shortly after general relativity was discovered. As is well known, in order to extend the program of geometrization of physics started by Einstein to include the electromagnetic…
A description of motion is proposed, adapted to the composite bundle interpretation of Poincar\'e Gauge Theory. Reference frames, relative positions and time evolution are characterized in gauge-theoretical terms. The approach is…
We will follow the growth of gravitational theory in Germany from 1915 to the 1990s, i.e., relativistic theories of gravitation, mainly Einstein's, as a branch of physics in the sense of social, more precisely institutional history. As…
A century ago, "past" and "future", previously strictly apart, mixed up and merged. Temporal terminology improved. Today, not actualized quantum states, that is merely "possible" alternatives, objectively "exist" (are real) when they…
This is a popular lecture about the history of gravitational wave research. Without any doubt, the discovery of gravitational waves is the most important event in the physics of the last decade along with the discovery of the Higgs boson.…
It is widely hoped that quantum gravity will shed light on the question of the origin of time in physics. The currently dominant approaches to a candidate quantum theory of gravity have naturally evolved from general relativity, on the one…
This paper reviews a paper from 1906 by J. Henri Poincar\'e on statistical mechanics with a background in his earlier work and notable connections to J. Willard Gibbs. Poincar\'e's paper presents important ideas that are still relevant for…
We present the basic concepts of space and time, the Galilean and pseudo-Euclidean geometry. We use an elementary geometric framework of affine spaces and groups of affine transformations to illustrate the natural relationship between…
In this Essay, we give a correct interpretation of a historical experiment by Kundig on the transverse Doppler shift in a rotating system (Mossbauer rotor experiment). This experiment has been recently first reanalyzed, and then replied by…
One of the main activities in science teaching, and in particular in Physics teaching, is not only the discussion of both modern problems and problems which solution is an urgent matter. It means that the picture of an active and alive…
Kantian philosophy of space, time and gravity is significantly affected in three ways by particle physics. First, particle physics deflects Schlick's General Relativity-based critique of synthetic a priori knowledge. Schlick argued that…
Einstein's theory of general relativity describes gravity as the interaction of particles with space-time geometry, as opposed to interacting with a physical fluid, as in the old gravitational aether theories. Moreover, any theoretical…