Overview

Having traced the origins and growth of scientific rationalism from Theogony through Ptolemy in the previous volume, Volume II begins with the fourteenth century critique of Aristotle's mechanics and ends with the development of quantum mechanics. The contributions to the breakdown of Aristotle's cosmology and its replacement with Newton's mechanistic world view are presented, along with subsequent developments in electricity, the emergence of modern chemistry with the overthrow of the phlogiston theory, and the creation of modern atomism. Finally, the evidence for the composite nature of the atom and the probing of its structure by Rutherford are discussed, as well as the revisions of classical mechanics owing to Einstein's relativity theory and the development of quantum mechanics by Planck, Bohr, Heisenberg, Schroedinger, and Dirac.

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9780820426990

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Reviews

In this very nice sequel to his first volume...Schlagel traces the interesting developments of scientific frameworks from Copernicus through quantum mechanics. (M.G. Prasad, Choice)

Author Information

The Author: Richard H. Schlagel is Elton Professor of Philosophy at The George Washington University. Having earned a Bachelor of Science degree at Springfield College, he received an M.A. and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Boston University. In addition to numerous articles on the philosophy of science in professional journals, the first edition of Animism to Archimedes, Volume I of From Myth to the Modern Mind: A Study of the Origins and Growth of Scientific Thought was published by Peter Lang in 1985. Contextual Realism: A Meta-physical Framework for Modern Science was published in 1986 by Paragon House.

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