物理学史与哲学

The astronomical work of Edmond Halley (1656-1742) during the latter half of the Copernican Revolution contributed substantially to the scientific proof and widespread acceptance of heliocentrism. Perhaps the most well-known example is his…

Annual astrological calendars, practica and prognostications became widespread publications in Europe after the invention of printing presses in the 15th century. Using the national language instead of Latin, the language of the scientists,…

The heartland of the Khmer empire is literally crowded by magnificent monuments built in the course of many centuries. These monuments include the world-famous state-temples, such as Angkor Wat, but also many other temples and huge water…

With this note, we remember our friend Maria Krawczyk, who passed away this year, on May 24th. We briefly outline some of her physics interests and main accomplishments, and her great human and moral qualities.

This paper aims to recall some of the main contributions of Roberto Petronzio to QCD, with a particular regard to the period we have been working together. His seminal contributions span both the development of analytic computations using…

In this paper I will present a short scientific biography of Guido Altarelli, briefly describing some of his most important seminal works. I will analyze in great details the paper of the $q^2$ evolution of the effective quark distribution:…

We present a brief review of the impact that Albert Einstein's visit to Argentina had on the scientific community and on the general public. Among other particularities, his visit was, at a certain point, somewhat disconcerting: not only…

According to the Butterfield--Isham proposal, to understand quantum gravity we must revise the way we view the universe of mathematics. However, this paper demonstrates that the current elaborations of this programme neglect quantum…

We present the analysis of the measured orientations of 30 churches of the island of Lanzarote, in the Canarian archipelago, built prior to 1810, as well as a few buildings of later times, which represent a nearly complete sample of all the…

In 1887 Woldemar Voigt published the paper "On Doppler's Principle," in which he demanded covariance to the homogeneous wave equation in inertial reference frames, assumed the invariance of the speed of light in these frames, and obtained a…

We review the developments of the statistical physics of fracture and earthquake over the last four decades. We argue that major progress has been made in this field and that the key concepts should now become integral part of the (under-)…

In this paper we investigate the history of relationalism and its present use in some interpretations of quantum mechanics. In the first part of this article we will provide a conceptual analysis of the relation between substantivalism,…

We present in this article the work of Henri B\'enard (1874-1939), French physicist who began the systematic experimental study of two hydrodynamic systems: the thermal convection of fluids heated from below (the Rayleigh-B\'enard…

The world famous Javanese temple of Borobudur is located at the westernmost end of a straight line which includes two satellite temples, Mendut and Pawon. Originally, the three buildings were probably connected by a processional path…

We describe and then elaborate the model of trading zones first presented in Collins et al 2007, Trading Zones and Interactional Expertise. We believe this expanded version of the model includes some very important but previously overlooked…

A few thoughts on physical meaning of geometry, space and time.

In 1887 Voigt published a paper dedicated to the Doppler effect in which he demanded form invariance to the wave equation in inertial frames and obtained a set of spacetime transformations now known as the Voigt transformations. In 1905…

We present a translation of the German text of an 1874 article by Valentin Rose that concerns the possible school of translators that worked in Toledo, Spain, from about 1150 to 1250. Rose's article relies significantly on the first-hand…

This is an annotated translation of Euler's 1777 manuscript "De Figura Quam Ventus Fluido Stagnanti Inducere Valet", where Euler models the shape which the wind gives to a still liquid surface.

This paper was given to mark the centenary of the death of David Gill, the foremost British astronomer in the last quarter of the 19th century and into the 20th century. Gill abandoned a successful career as a clock and watchmaker. His…