The History of Physics: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) by J. L. Heilbron (PDF)

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How does the physics we know today – a highly professionalised enterprise, inextricably linked to government and industry – link back to its origins as a liberal art in Ancient Greece? What is the path that leads from the old philosophy of nature and its concern with humankind’s place in the universe to modern massive international projects that hunt down fundamental particles and industrial laboratories that manufacture marvels?This Very Short Introduction introduces us to Islamic astronomers and mathematicians calculating the size of the earth whilst their caliphs conquered much of it; to medieval scholar-theologians investigating light; to Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton, measuring, and trying to explain, the universe. We visit the ‘House of Wisdom’ in 9th-century Baghdad; Europe’s first universities; the courts of the Renaissance; the Scientific Revolution and the academies of the 18th century; andthe increasingly specialised world of 20th and 21st century science. Highlighting the shifting relationship between physics, philosophy, mathematics, and technology – and the implications for humankind’s self-understanding – Heilbron explores the changing place and purpose of physics in the cultures andsocieties that have nurtured it over the centuries.ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐I love Oxford’s “Very Short” series; I’ve read (and enjoyed) over 70. I was interested in a brief introduction to the “History of Physics,” but I found this unhelpful. The author/editor presupposes that the reader knows the main concepts of physics. Here’s a typical example: “Heat equilibrium occurs when entropy is a maximum. This simple statement hides a deep difficulty. If a gas is a perfect mechanical system, its motion should be reversible. Hence a statistical-mechanical representation of entropy appeared impossible. [Ludwig] Boltzmann countered that, owing to the colossal number of molecules in play, departures from equilibrium will almost certainly be reversed instantaneously (1872, 1877 the ‘H-theorem’).”It is like this throughout all 149 pages. He also employs a significant amount of name-dropping, but then moves on without clarifying some of the reasons how this person was able to supersede an older theory by promoting a new one in more than a few sentences; the reader doesn’t come way feeling enlightened about what is going on in the historical process. This is the problem of using this format for a topic attempting to cover an entire history of physics since the pre-Socratics. I think readers would be better served by looking at longer books to help fill in the gaps. The history of physics is not a straight, linear-told tale, but a series of paradigms that vie for attention due to culture, societal, and intellectual trends that compose the larger context.When one finally slogs to the end, they are greeted with this typical, scientistic appraisal of the history they just outlined: “De-deifying and de-anthropomorphizing nature produced physics, and physics now claims control of large swathes of territory previously ruled by capricious deities and organized religion. If the consequent picture of nature alarms humankind, this might reflect the healthy recognition that the world was not designed for us. . . . If humankind accepts the responsibility and the concomitant loss of providential deities and sacred dicta, the human species might beat the odds against the survival of an electromagnetic civilization, preserve the earth, and, in the fullness of time, arrive at several satisfactory theories of everything” (p. 149).This notion of “religion vs science” is not taken seriously by people well-read in the histories of science and philosophy that have been published these last 40-50 years. I would recommend Edward Feser, Stephen Gaukroger, David Lindberg, and Ronald Numbers, to name a few. The earliest advanced civilizations (Babylon, Egypt, Mayan) had no problems using their minds to fashion an impressive set of cultural artifacts without needing to “de-deify” the world of objects; the two are not mutually exclusive. Most natural philosophers who contributed to these discoveries about the natural world believed that they were understanding the universe sub specie aeternitatis, or how a divine craftsman saw the world. In this sense, what they were doing was re-imagining the cosmos by virtue of existing as a being made in the image of God; to anthropomorphize nature does not necessarily imply one is making something “perfect” (Nature) into something “imperfect” (Human). People constantly rail against this anthropomorphizing tendency as if it’s some pernicious virus that needs to be eliminated. Pure objectivity will always be impossible. However, in our case (as humans created by God), any desire to see the meaning and significance of every object from a human perspective (no matter how small or seemingly insignificant) suggests not a negative set of eyeglasses to discard, but a fruitful way of living in a spatio-temporal universe with a metaphysical soul. The alternative is presented in Heilbron’s concluding chapter. As William James pointed out, we will believe that which is more pragmatically fulfilling. No one will ever know what happened in the beginning, but to attempt to persuade readers that some future TOE will be solved ONLY IF we give up our childish religious beliefs seems to fly in the face of the evidence documented in his own book: these philosophers/scientists did not give up such beliefs and still made “progress” for a naturalistic physics to emerge (again, see histories of philosophy explaining the ideas of Thales, Anaximander, etc; along with their naturalistic leanings, they believed in divine powers).Besides, if God wanted to immediately restore the world as it once was (no smog, no climate change, no disease/death), do we really imagine it would take more than a “flick of his wrist” to accomplish this? The question is: Why should he? What would that accomplish? It would only reset the universe to begin again, but the same problems would emerge: Free will leads to choices which leads to infinite desires. Included in those desires is wanting to imagine that oneself is truly the only “god” of the universe. What would the solution be then? Dear readers, don’t be misled by the claims of modern science.

⭐Physics was and is broader than science. The objective has always been to gain a comprehensive u derstanding of Everything: a ToE, theory of Everything. John Heilbron tells the story with wit and verve. Start your journey here.

⭐Tour de force of development of physics from Aristotle to present. The emphasis is not on the revolution in physics rather the progress is described linearly.

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