Overview

This collection of essays devoted to Heinrich Hertz (1857-1894) brings together an international group of physicists, philosophers, and historians of science. It includes investigations of Hertz's background, his theoretical and experimental contributions, his philosophy of science, and his influence on science and philosophy in the 20th century. Its central focus is Hertz's 'Principles of Mechanics' of 1894, which develops the methodological intuitions that also informed his earlier discovery of electromagnetic wave radiation (so-called radio waves). Though his proposed reform of mechanics was not adopted, the book proved influential on physicists like Einstein, Schrodinger, Bohr, and Heisenberg, and on philosophers like Cassirer, Schlick, and Wittgenstein. It can be regarded as an ancestor of Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions, it anticipated current discussions on the role of models in science, and it represents an important chapter in the history of conventionalism.

Full Product Details

Author:   D. Baird ,  R.I. Hughes ,  A. Nordmann
Publisher:   Springer
Imprint:   Springer
Edition:   1997 ed.
Volume:   198
Dimensions:   Width: 15.60cm , Height: 2.00cm , Length: 23.40cm
Weight:   1.410kg
ISBN:  

9780792346531

ISBN 10:   079234653
Pages:   324
Publication Date:   31 January 1998
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Undergraduate ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

Hertz, Helmholtz and Their Experimental Culture.- Heinrich Hertz and the Berlin School of Physics.- From Helmholtz’s Philosophy of Science to Hertz’s Picture-Theory.- The Loss of World in the Image: Origin and Development of the Concept of Image in the Thought of Hermann von Helmholtz and Heinrich Hertz.- Electrodynamics and the Discovery of Electromagnetic Waves.- Heinrich Hertz’s Experiments and Experimental Apparatus: His Discovery of Radio Waves and His Delineation of their Properties.- Hertz’s Study of Propagation vs. Rutherford’s Study of Structure: Two Modes of Experimentation and their Theoretical Underpinnings.- On Hertz’s Conceptual Conversion: From Wire Waves to Air Waves.- The Principles of Mechanics.- Hertz’s View on the Methods of Physics: Experiment and Theory Reconciled?.- Hertz and the Geometrization of Mechanics.- Hertz’s Principles.- “Everything could be different”: The Principles of Mechanics and the Limits of Physics.- Hertz’s Influence on Twentieth Century Science and Philosophy.- The Reception of Heinrich Hertz’s Principles of Mechanics by His Contemporaries.- Heinrich Hertz’s Mechanics: A Model for Werner Heisenberg’s April 1925 Paper on the Anomalous Zeeman Effect.- Heinrich Hertz’s Picture-Conception of Theories: Its Elaboration by Hilbert, Weyl, and Ramsey.- Hertz’s Philosophy of Nature in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus.- Postscript.- Reflections on Hertz and the Hertzian Dipole.- Heinrich Hertz: A Bibliography.- Concordance and Index of Passages.- Index of Names.

Reviews

... unusually well-balanced anthology ... The editors...are to be congratulated for producing a superb introduction to Hertz scholarship.' ISIS, 91: 1 (2000)

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