物理学史与哲学

In The Philosophy of Information (2011 book), Luciano Floridi presents an ontological theory of Being qua Being, which he calls "Informational Structural Realism", a theory which applies, he says, to every possible world. He identifies…

Newton set the stage for our view of how science should be done. We remain in what I will call the `Newtonian Paradigm' in all of physics, including Newton, Einstein, and Schrodinger. As I will show shortly, Newton invented and bequeathed…

William Thomson proved Carnot's theorem basing on postulate: "It is impossible, by means of inanimate material agency, to derive mechanical effect from any portion of matter by cooling it below the temperature of the coldest of the…

Ever since Flinders Petrie undertook a theodolite survey on the Giza plateau in 1881 and drew attention to the extraordinary degree of precision with which the three colossal pyramids are oriented upon the four cardinal directions, there…

Georges Lemaitre gave a theoretical proof for his 1927 doctoral thesis in astronomy that the maximum spherical radius of our Universe can be computed from first principles to be 14.2 billion light-years (Lemaitre 1927a). That estimate,…

R. Clausius proved Carnot's theorem basing on postulate "Heat cannot, of itself, pass from a colder to a hotter body". Alexander Gukhman demonstrated that Carnot's theorem can be proved based on the postulate "Heat cannot, of itself, pass…

Of the first two relativistiv world models, only the one by de Sitter predicted redshifted spectra from far away astronomical objects. Slipher's redshifts therefore seemed to arbitrate against Einstein's model which made no such…

The air density on earth decays as a function of altitude $z$ approximately according to an $\exp(-w\,z/\theta)$-law, where $w$ denotes the weight of a nitrogen molecule and $\theta=\kB T$ where $k_B$ is a constant and $T$ the thermodynamic…

The traditional concept of knowledge is a justified true belief. The bulk of contemporary epistemology has focused primarily on that task of justification. Truth seems to be a quite obvious criterion-does the belief in question correspond…

The sudden and untimely death of Pawel Max Maksym will not diminish his contributions to the field of occultation astronomy, and to Polish society in general. Founder of the Pope Silvester II Observatory in Bukowiec, he was also writing a…

The unification of electricity and magnetism achieved by special relativity has remained for decades a model of unification in theoretical physics. We discuss the relationship between electric and magnetic fields from a classical point of…

On 28th and 29th of January 2013 we held an international meeting in Zielona G\'ora (Poland) honouring the first anniversary of premature passing away^(1) of Professor Roman Juszkiewicz. We have celebrated an opening of a new seminar room…

We discuss the hints for the disappearance of continuum space and time at microscopic scale. These include arguments for a discrete nature of them or for a fundamental non-locality, in a quantum theory of gravity. We discuss how these ideas…

Bruno Rossi is considered one of the fathers of modern physics, being also a pioneer in virtually every aspect of what is today called high-energy astrophysics. At the beginning of 1930s he was the pioneer of cosmic ray research in Italy,…

Ninety years ago, in 1922, Alexander Friedman (1888-1925) demonstrated for the first time that the General Relativity equations admit non-static solutions and thus the Universe may expand, contract, collapse, and even be born. The…

Only seven transits of Venus have been observed and studied up to now since the first astronomical observations with the telescope: 1639, 1761-69, 1874-82 and 2004-12. The measurement of the Astronomical Unit has been one of the main goal…

The idea of dwarf and giants stars, but not the nomenclature, was first established by Eijnar Hertzsprung in 1905; his first diagrams in support appeared in 1911. In 1913 Henry Norris Russell could demonstrate the effect far more strikingly…

In the winter of 1967 Cambridge radio astronomers discovered a new type of radio source of such an artificial seeming nature that for a few weeks some members of the group had to seriously consider whether they had discovered an…

Upon reading Einstein's views on quantum incompleteness in publications or in his correspondence after 1935 (the EPR paradox), one gets a very intense feeling of deja-vu. Einstein presents a quantum hole argument, which somewhat reminds of…

Henry Norris Russell, one of the most influential American astronomers of the first half of the 20th Century, had a special place in his heart for the Lowell Observatory. Although privately critical of the founder for his pronouncements…