相关论文: MELENCOLIA I: The physics of Albrecht Duerer

Ninety years ago in 1927, at an international congress in Como, Italy, Niels Bohr gave an address which is recognized as the first instance in which the term "complementarity", as a physical concept, was spoken publicly [1], revealing…

The concept of mechanical work is inherited from the concepts of potentia absoluta and men's work, both implemented in the Section IX of Daniel Bernoulli's Hydrodynamica in 1738. Nonetheless, Bernoulli did not confuse those two entities: he…

Einstein was in many ways like a detective on a mystery trail, though in his case he was on the trail of nature's mysteries and not some murder mystery! And like all good detectives he had a style. It consisted of taking facts that he knew…

This is an annotated translation of E126 'De novo genere oscillationum', in which Euler derived for the first time, the differential equation of the (undamped) simple harmonic oscillator under harmonic excitation, namely, the motion of an…

Johann Kepler (1571-1630) is sometimes considered as a precursor of science-fiction novels with the writing of "Somnium, sive opus posthumum of astronomia lunaris". In this work published posthumously in 1634 by his son Ludwig, Kepler…

Einstein's thesis ``A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions'' was the second of his five celebrated papers in 1905. Although it is -- thanks to its widespread practical applications -- the most quoted of his papers, it is less known…

Louis de Broglie's celebrated hypothesis transfers a problem of representation of optics to the quantum theories. Let us suppose that the fact that originated the problem in optics is the following, "The images obtained by optical…

Following the results and the general methodological framework of a preceeding paper (Models and Metaphors, part I, henceforth: MM), we develop some results on the epistemological state of natural laws and ask for explicit possibilities of…

Einstein initially objected to the probabilistic aspect of quantum mechanics - the idea that God is playing at dice. Later he changed his ground, and focussed instead on the point that the Copenhagen Interpretation leads to what Einstein…

Classical physics is generally regarded as deterministic, as opposed to quantum mechanics that is considered the first theory to have introduced genuine indeterminism into physics. We challenge this view by arguing that the alleged…

The cultural infrastructure that let Galileo invent the modern physics is discussed. The key new element of modern physics was firm belief in its fundamental structure, which could be expressed in the double postulate: 1) There are…

Decoherence shows how the openness of quantum systems -- interaction with their environment -- suppresses flagrant manifestations of quantumness. Einselection accounts for the emergence of preferred quasi-classical pointer states. Quantum…

A Thesis about Euler discussing the possibilities and limits of his method of work in Mathematics.

In this paper of "The Epistemology of Contemporary Physics" series we investigate the epistemological significance and sensibility (and hence interpretability and interpretation) of classical mechanics in its Newtonian and non-Newtonian…

In a series of comments, Bonder et al. criticized our work on decoherence due to time dilation [Nature Physics 11, 668-672 (2015)]. First the authors erroneously claimed that our results contradict the equivalence principle, only to…

While Kepler was still working in Graz during 1598, some letters to his mentor Michael Maestlin demonstrate his interest in astronomical clocks and machines. The first letter, dated January 6, 1598 contains a detailed description of a…

A panoramic view, preceded by a short background of Newtonian mechanics and Maxwellian electrodynamics, is offered on the extent of how Einstein's space-time geometry, believed to be central to an understanding of the structure of the…

Classical, Quantum, Relativistic and Statistical: the four branches of mechanics. However, the Quattro Donna of Physics disagree even about the entities that are supposed to be fundamental, such as space, matter and time. In order to search…

This paper presents yet another personal reflection on one the most important concepts in both science and the humanities: time. This elusive notion has been not only bothering philosophers since Plato and Aristotle. It goes throughout…

In the first part of this paper we review several formalisms which give alternative ways for describing the light. They are: the formalism `baroque' and the Majorana-Oppenheimer form of electrodynamics, the Sachs' theory of Elementary…