A Cultural History of Physics

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Description:
While the physical sciences are a continuously evolving source of technology and of understanding about our world, they have become so specialized and rely on so much prerequisite knowledge that for many people today the divide between the sciences and the humanities seems even greater than it was when C. P. Snow delivered his famous 1959 lecture, "The Two Cultures."
In A Cultural History of Physics, Hungarian scientist and educator Károly Simonyi succeeds in bridging this chasm by describing the experimental methods and theoretical interpretations that created scientific knowledge, from ancient times to the present day, within the cultural environment in which it was formed. Unlike any other work of its kind, Simonyi’s seminal opus explores the interplay of science and the humanities to convey the wonder and excitement of scientific development throughout the ages.
These pages contain an abundance of excerpts from original resources, a wide array of clear and straightforward explanations, and an astonishing wealth of insight, revealing the historical progress of science and inviting readers into a dialogue with the great scientific minds that shaped our current understanding of physics.
Beautifully illustrated, accurate in its scientific content and broad in its historical and cultural perspective, this book will be a valuable reference for scholars and an inspiration to aspiring scientists and humanists who believe that science is an integral part of our culture.
 
 

Foreword

An exceptional book such as this could have been created only under exceptional circumstances. My father was a working physicist and a beloved university professor who taught a whole generation of Hungarian electrical engineers. His textbooks on the foundations of electrical engineering have been translated into many languages. Yet, in the politically charged atmosphere of the 1960s in Hungary, his quasi-apolitical personal conduct, based on the age-old virtues of hard work, good character, and charity, was interpreted as political defiance that could not be countenanced by the state. Hence, he progressively lost his directorship at the Physics Research Institute, his post as department head, and finally his teaching position al- together. I was still a minor when I left the country—and my parents—in search of a better life. It was understood by all that my doing so—a political act in a totalitarian era—would make my father’s situation even more difficult.
Besides being a scientist, my father was a great humanist, not only in terms of his concern for his fellow man but also in the sense of a scholar of the humanities: he was extremely well read in the classics as well as in contemporary literature and history. The break in his career at midlife did not drive him to despair; his humanism instead commanded him to work on the subject he had perhaps always wanted to work on: the history of the interplay of science and the humanities. His first notes became a lecture series, first given off campus, in the evenings at the invitation of student organizations. Much later, when I was able to return to Hungary, I was privileged to listen to one of these lectures, still filled to more than capacity with students and young intellectuals, hearing my father convey the excitement and wonder of scientific development—how difficult it was to make progress in science, not simply because of ignorance but because the arguments were complex and the evidence was often ambigu- ous, and how the scientists gained courage or were otherwise influenced by the humanities. The success of these lectures gave rise to the present book that he continued to revise and extend almost until his death in 2001.
All history books that treat the modern period face a problem: when should the discussion close? My father prided himself on keeping the book up-to-date as it progressed through five Hungarian editions and three German editions. Now, nearly a decade after his death, we edited the story down to what was firmly settled by the year 2000, and asked the noted and brilliant physicist Ed Witten to write an epilogue bringing us up to date with the current scientific outlook, as opposed to the already stale speculations made in the recent past. The English edition of the book was a dream for my father that he was unfortunately unable to realize due to the costs and the difficulties of supervising the translation. I was very fortunate in having found an experienced and courageous publisher, A K Peters (now part of CRC Press, a Taylor and Francis Group), who was willing and able to undertake the task. The translation was based on the third German edition, but being cognizant of the dangers xii involved in a second-generation translation of a translation, we carefully com- pared the results with the original Hungarian text and, wherever necessary, the more direct and conversational tenor of the original was restored.
The goal of the English edition is to be a “world book”—not just for the US and for other English-speaking countries but for all nations. Just as in the Middle Ages when Latin was the language of international scholarship, now we have a true world language of great expressive power, beauty, and flexibility, namely English, and it is our earnest hope that this translation will be enjoyed by everyone interested in the subject regardless of their native language. Special thanks are due to Alice and Klaus Peters for the direction of this multifaceted project, from the typographic design to the supervision of the translation, editing, and production. The base translation was done by David Kramer. The text was reviewed by Robert Schiller and Alex Farba DeLeon. Charlotte Henderson did the final copy editing, including that of the mathematical formulas. Others involved in the project were Camber Agrelius, Sarah Chow, Julie Nicolazzo, and Sandra Rush. This republishing of my father’s main work would not have been possible without the support of the family: my mother, Zsuzsa, my brother, Tamas, and my wife, Lisa. Special help from Ildikó Csurgay with the illustrations is gratefully acknowledged. Finally, I am tremendously grateful for Prof. Edward Witten of the Institute for Advanced Study for contributing the epilogue.
 
Table of contents
Introduction
The History of Physics and Its Relevance to Our Lives Today
Assessment and Division into Epochs
Elements of the Philosophy of Science
The Dynamism of History
The Classical Heritage
The Greek Inheritance
The Harmonious, Beautiful Order
Matter and Motion: The Aristotelian Synthesis
The Greatest Achievements of the Ancient Sciences
The Twilight of Hellenism
The Stewards of the Heritage
The Thousand-Year Balance Sheet
The Salvage of Ancient Knowledge
The Indian and Arab Worlds
The West Awakens
Medieval Natural Philosophy
The Renaissance and Physics
Demolition and the Construction of a New Foundation
The World in 1600
Numerology and Reality
Galileo and Those Who Stood in His Shadow
The New Philosophy: Doubt Becomes Method
Light, Vacuum, and Matter through the Middle of the Seventeenth Century
After Descartes and before Newton: Huygens
Newton and the Principia: The Newtonian Worldview
The Completion of Classical Physics
Starting Capital for the Eighteenth Century
Worthy Successors: d’Alembert, Euler, and Lagrange
The Century of Light
From Effluvium to the Electromagnetic Field
Heat and Energy
The Structure of Matter and Electricity: The Classical Atom
The Physics of the Twentieth Century
"Clouds on the Horizon of Nineteenth-Century Physics"
The Theory of Relativity
Quantum Theory
Nuclear Structure, Nuclear Energy
Law and Symmetry
Mankind and the Universe
 

Biography

Károly Simonyi (1916–2001)Károly Simonyi was born the seventh of ten children in a small village in Hungary. His talent for learning was apparent early on, and a prominent relative brought him to Budapest and sponsored his education. Simonyi went on to earn degrees in engineering and law.After the tumultuous years of World War II, Simonyi returned to research, ultimately becoming a professor at the Budapest Technical University, where he was known as an outstanding teacher. He organized the Department of Theoretical Electrical Engineering, taught generations of electrical engineers, and published lectures and textbooks that have been translated into many languages.Despite his accomplishments, the political climate of 1960s Hungary was not a favorable one for Simonyi, and his work at the university was increasingly curtailed until he ultimately lost his teaching position altogether. But even this could not keep Simonyi from his work. Though his profession was science, he had always maintained an interest in the humanities, and in his new circumstances he undertook a great project: to tell the story of the history of physics and the cultural, philosophical, and societal movements that had shaped and been shaped by its development. The book that grew out of this project, published first in Hungarian, then in German, and now in English, has been highly successful and widely read.Charles SimonyiCreation of the English edition of A Cultural History of Physics has been directed by Károly’s son Charles. A successful entrepreneur, Charles emigrated to the United States as a teenager and went on to become a software engineer at Xerox and at Microsoft, where he oversaw the development of what would become some of Microsoft’s most profitable products: Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel. Charles is a distinguished philanthropist, as well as the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.