物理学史与哲学

This paper introduces terms like inference, substance, etc. and discusses atomic reactions as understood by the ancient Indian physicists of the Nyaya-Vaisesika School.

Einstein's early thoughts about superconductivity are discussed as a case study of how theoretical physics reacts to experimental findings that are incompatible with established theoretical notions. One such notion that is discussed is the…

We reminisce on the first steps of the cosmology community in Portugal, which can be traced back to about 20 years ago, and discuss its achievements and current specificities. We also reflect on the aspirations, hopes and challenges for the…

The concept of typicality refers to properties holding for the "overwhelming majority" of cases and is a fundamental idea of the qualitative approach to dynamical problems. We argue that measure-theoretical typicality would be the adequate…

This note has been written on the occasion of Gerard 't Hooft's 60th birthday celebration. It is not a technical paper but just a collection of discussions that the three authors had with Gerard, mostly in relation with the idea of…

It is a quite common view among people, that are not aware of the developments in modern physics, that it is part of human nature to substitute religious faith in places where there is no knowledge. Therefore, an increase in knowledge would…

It is shown that, in contrast to many interpretations in the press, the drafts of Bohr's unsent letters to Heisenberg are not contradicting Heisenberg's description of his famous trip in 1941 to Copenhagen, but are complementary to it.

This is the second installment of a two-part paper on developments in quantum dispersion theory leading up to Heisenberg's "Umdeutung" paper. In telling this story, we have taken a paper by John H. Van Vleck as our main guide. In this…

In October 1924, the Physical Review, a relatively minor journal at the time, published a remarkable two-part paper by John H. Van Vleck, working in virtual isolation at the University of Minnesota. Van Vleck combined advanced techniques of…

We illustrate a simple derivation of the Schrodinger equation, which requires only knowledge of the electromagnetic wave equation and the basics of Einstein's special theory of relativity. We do this by extending the wave equation for…

This paper presents the principle of relativity of motion as described in Aryabhata's text Aryabhatiya. This principle is likely to have been instrumental in the faming of Aryabhata's theory that the earth rotated on its axis and,…

It is noted that a given pairing of the phase factor and gauge transformation to retain gauge symmetry is not unique. In their seminal paper, when Yang and Mills (YM) discuss the phase factor - gauge transformation relationship, they cite…

In this manuscript we present a brief life history of Ludwig Edward Boltzmann and his achivements. Particularly, we discuss his H-theorem, his work on entropy and statistical interpretation of second-law of thermodynamics. We point out his…

This year is the centenary of the birth of Ettore Majorana, one of the major Italian physicists of all times. In this note we briefly sketch a few biographical details about Ettore Majorana and introduce and discuss the main points of…

In 1966, the Brazilian physicist Klaus Tausk circulated a preprint from the International Centre for Theoretical Physics, in Trieste, criticizing the theory put forward by Daneri, Loinger & Prosperi on the measurement problem in quantum…

The development of Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) is sketched from its earliest beginnings until the formulations of 1949, using the example of the divergent self-energy of the electron as a quintessential problem of the 1930's-40's. The…

We consider possibilities of modification of Maxwell's equations of electrodynamics that could have automatically led to a massive photon. Why weren't such questions considered at the time when quantum theory was introduced at the beginning…

Peter Bergmann was a co-inventor of the algorithm for converting singular Lagrangian models into a constrained Hamiltonian dynamical formalism. This talk focuses on the work of Bergmann and his collaborators in the period from 1949 to 1951.

A 21st century view of the nature of science is presented. It attempts to show how a consistent description of science and scientific progress can be given. Science advances through a sequence of models with progressively greater predictive…

The recently shown two premises (Gurzadyan 2000), i.e. the absence of 56/64 year Venus cycle constraints, at the importance of the 8-year cycle in the Venus Tablet, stimulated new studies on the Chronology of the Ancient Near East (2nd…