物理学史与哲学

Evidence is recalled of the strong opposition of Niels Bohr, at the time of the Old Quantum Theory 1.913-25, to the Lichtquanten hypothesis of Einstein. Some episodes with H.A. Kramers, J.C. Slater and W. Heisenberg are recollected; Bohr's…

Sir Arthur Eddington is considered one of the greatest astrophysicist of the twentieth century and yet he gained a stigma when, in the 1930s, he embarked on a quest to develop a unified theory of gravity and quantum mechanics. His attempts…

The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory is investigated from a philosophical point of view. It is justified the opinion that the philosophical attitude the Copenhagen interpretation is based on is in principle inevitable for a real…

Understanding of the weak force is traced from Fermi's theory of beta decay to the V-A theory of the mid 1950's. The theoretical suggestion and experimental confirmation of parity violation in the weak force is discussed. Topics are…

The publication of a revised edition of a monograph devoted to the two-band theory of superconductivity provides us the opportunity of a short comment on two classical papers, published independently some 50 years ago, where the…

The aim of this project is to review and expand upon the model proposed by Father Jose Domingo Duquesne de la Madrid (1745-1821) regarding the calendar of the ancient Muisca culture of the central Colombia. This model was dismissed by…

In Minoan art, symbols for celestial objects were depicted frequently and often in a religious context. The most common were various solar and stellar symbols. The palace of Knossos was amply decorated with these symbols. The rituals…

General Relativity offers the possibility to model attributes of matter, like mass, momentum, angular momentum, spin, chirality etc. from pure space, endowed only with a single field that represents its Riemannian geometry. I review this…

The magnetic version of the effects commonly attributed to Aharonov and Bohm had been published ten years earlier by Ehrenberg and Siday. We compare the two articles, and conclude that their essential contents are identical. We therefore…

The two southernmost gates of the Goseck rondel, built by the Stichbandkeramik culture around 4800 BCE, were oriented to the winter solstice sunrise and sunset. The northern gate of the rondel deviates a few degrees from the Meridian line.…

The general public has been made aware of the research field of "chaos" by the book of that title by James Gleick. This paper will focus on the achievements of Sonya Kovalevskaya, Mary Cartwright, and Mary Tsingou, whose pioneer works were…

On the fiftieth anniversary of Yang-Mills theory, I review the contribution to its understanding by my collaborators and me. Contents: 1.Gauge Theories and Quantum Anomalies; 2.Mathematical Connections; 3. Gauge Field Dynamics other than…

This paper looks at the early theory of phase transitions. It considers a group of related concepts derived from condensed matter and statistical physics. The key technical ideas here go under the names of "singularity", "order parameter",…

A critical discussion of recent attempts to revise the modern physics history is presented.

This paper recalls the development of gauge theory culminating in Yang-Mills theory, and the application of differential geometry including connections on fiber bundles to field theory. Finally, we see how the preceding is used to explain…

Galileo Galilei believed that stars were distant suns whose sizes, measured via his telescope, were a direct indication of distance -- fainter stars (appearing smaller in the telescope) were farther away than brighter ones. Galileo argued…

Galileo determined distances to stars based on the assumption that stars were suns, the apparent sizes of stars as seen through his telescope, and basic geometry. However, the apparent sizes that he measured were the result of diffraction…

Since Descartes' dualism, with his res extensa and res cogitans, six fundamental problems in the philosophy and natural history of mind are these: 1. how does mind act on matter? 2. If mind does not act on matter is mind a mere…

An early phase of theoretical high energy physics in Israel specifically that connected with Yuval Ne'eman and a small group of my classmates, myself, and several others who worked around him after his return to Israel on the "Eight-fold…

This part of the talk aims to present briefly the biodata and the exceptional career of Paco Yndurain who left us suddenly in June 2008. The scientific part: Light Scalar Mesons in QCD is published in the proceedings of QCD 08 (Montpellier…