物理学史与哲学
The timber roofing structure (charpente or combles, in French) of the cathedral Notre-Dame, destroyed by the fire of April 15th, 2019, is studied. The aim is twofold: on the one hand, it is interesting to evaluate the structural behavior of…
A recent series of experiments have demonstrated that a classical fluid mechanical system, constituted by an oil droplet bouncing on a vibrating fluid surface, can be induced to display a number of behaviours previously considered to be…
This paper summarises briefly and in English some of the results of the book Hoffmann: Hipparchs Himmelsglobus, Springer, 2017 that had to be written in German. The globe of Hipparchus is not preserved. For that reason, it has been a source…
What happens when scientists are, at certain points in a field's development, playing a game? I present a framework for such an analysis that draws on the theory of games provided by the historian Johan Huizinga. Huizinga gives five…
The notion of tree network has sparked renewed interest in recent years, particularly in computer science and biology (neural network). However, this notion is usually interpreted in an extremely restrictive way: essentially linked to data…
Pythagoras' theorem lies at the heart of physics as well as mathematics, yet its historical origins are obscure. We highlight a purely pictorial, gestalt-like proof that may have originated during the Zhou Dynasty. Generalizations of the…
In his recently discovered handwritten notes on "An alternate way to handle electrodynamics" dated on 1963, Richard P. Feynman speculated with the idea of getting the inhomogeneous Maxwell's equations for the electric and magnetic fields…
Arthur Stanley Eddington was one of the leading astronomers and theorists of his generation and a prominent proponent of the general theory of relativity. Yet when his former assistant Georges Lemaitre sent him a paper in 1927 suggesting…
The time derivative of the circulation of a vector field $\boldsymbol{A}$ over a moving and deforming closed curve, $\frac {\mathrm{d}}{\mathrm{d} t}\oint \boldsymbol{A} \cdot \mathrm{d} \boldsymbol{r}$, is computed in two ways, with and…
I argue that, contrary to the standard view, one cannot understand the structure and nature of our knowledge in physics without an analysis of the way that observers (and, more generally, measuring instruments and experimental arrangements)…
There are many ways we can not know. Even in systems that we created ourselves, as, for example, systems in mathematical logic, Go\"edel and Tarski's theorems impose limits on what we can know. As we try to speak of the real world, things…
In this paper I review the problematic relationship between science and philosophy; in particular, I will address the question of whether science needs philosophy, and I will offer some positive perspectives that should be helpful in…
Physicists and philosophers alike have pondered the measurement problem in quantum mechanics since the beginning of the theory nearly a century ago. Marcel Reginatto and I (2013) have made the case as have many others, Niels Bohr among…
In a brief but brilliant derivation that can be found in Maxwell's Treatise and traced back to his 1861 and 1865 papers, he derives the force on a moving electric charge subject to electromagnetic fields from his mathematical expression of…
This is a chapter of the planned monograph "Out of Nowhere: The Emergence of Spacetime in Quantum Theories of Gravity", co-authored by Nick Huggett and Christian W\"uthrich and under contract with Oxford University Press. (More information…
We consider various curious features of general relativity, and relativistic field theory, in two spacetime dimensions. In particular, we discuss: the vanishing of the Einstein tensor; the failure of an initial-value formulation for vacuum…
Impact of academic research onto the non-academic world is of increasing importance as authorities seek return on public investment. Impact opens new opportunities for what are known as "professional services": as scientometrical tools…
Scientific research is and was at all times a transnational (global) activity. In this respect, it crosses several borders: national, cultural, and ideological. Even in times when physical borders separated the scientific community,…
This is a chapter of the planned monograph "Out of Nowhere: The Emergence of Spacetime in Quantum Theories of Gravity", co-authored by Nick Huggett and Christian W\"uthrich and under contract with Oxford University Press. (More information…
Eternalism, the view that what we regard locally as being located in the past, the present and the future equally exists, is the best ontological account of temporal existence in line with special and general relativity. However, special…