The Oxford Handbook of the History of Physics

出版者:Oxford University Press

作者:Jed Z. Buchwald (ed.)

页数:960

出版时间:2017-8-15

价格:USD 55.00

装帧:Paperback

isbn号码:9780198805328

具体描述

The Oxford Handbook of the History of Physics brings together cutting-edge writing by more than twenty leading authorities on the history of physics from the seventeenth century to the present day. By presenting a wide diversity of studies in a single volume, it provides authoritative introductions to scholarly contributions that have tended to be dispersed in journals and books not easily accessible to the general reader. While the core thread remains the theories and experimental practices of physics, the Handbook contains chapters on other dimensions that have their place in any rounded history. These include the role of lecturing and textbooks in the communication of knowledge, the contribution of instrument-makers and instrument-making companies in providing for the needs of both research and lecture demonstrations, and the growing importance of the many interfaces between academic physics, industry, and the military.

作者简介

Jed Buchwald is Doris and Henry Dreyfuss Professor of History at the California Institute of Technology. Awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 1995 and a Killam Fellowship in 1990 (Canada), Buchwald was trained at Princeton and Harvard. From 1974 to 1992 he taught at, and then served as Director of, the University of Toronto's Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology. From 1992 to 2001 he was at MIT as Dibner Professor of the History of Science, where he also directed the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology. Buchwald has authored or co-authored five books and edited eight volumes on the history of science and related matters, as well as about seventy articles.

Robert Fox read physics at Oxford and then took a doctorate in the history of science, also at Oxford. He taught in the Department of History of the University of Lancaster from 1966, being awarded a personal chair in the history of science there in 1987. After a brief period as Assistant Director and Head of the Research and Information Services Division in the Science Museum, London, he was appointed to the chair of the history of science at the University of Oxford in 1988. Since retiring from the Oxford chair in 2006, he has held visiting professorships in the USA, at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD (2007) and East Carolina University, Greenville, NC (2009), and the Czech Republic, at the Czech National University of Technology (2010). He has served as President of the Division of History of Science of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science (1993-7) and of the IUHPS (1995-7).

Contributors:

Paolo Brenni

Jed Buchwald

Sandro Caparrini

Hasok Chang

Olivier Darrigol

Robert Fox

Craig Fraser

Graeme Gooday

Niccolò Guicciardini

John Heilbron

Daniel Kennefick

Helge Kragh

Bertoloni Meli

Anita McConnell

Daniel Mitchell

Iwan Morus

Kathy Olesko

Giuliano Pancaldi

Jürgen Renn

Suman Seth

Eric Schliesser

John Schuster

Alan Shapiro

Terry Shinn

Josep Simon

Chris Smeenk

Crosbie Smith

Friedrich Steinle

Larry Stewart

Noel Swerdlow

Anthony Turner

目录信息

Introduction, Jed Buchwald and Robert Fox
Part I: Physics and the New Science
1: Was there a Scientific Revolution?, John Heilbron
2: Galileo's Mechanics of Natural Motion and Projectiles, Noel Swerdlow
3: Cartesian Physics, John Schuster
4: Physics and the Instrument-Makers, 1550-1700, Anthony Turner
5: Newton's Principia, Eric Schliesser and Chris Smeenk
6: Newton's Optics, Alan Shapiro
7: Experimentation in the Physical Sciences of the 17th Century, Bertoloni Meli
8: Mathematics and the New Sciences, Niccolò Guicciardini
Part II: The Long Eighteenth Century
9: The Physics of Imponderable Fluids, Giuliano Pancaldi
10: Physics on Show: Entertainment, Demonstration, and Research in the Eighteenth Century, Larry Stewart
11: Instruments and Instrument-Makers, 1700-1850, Anita McConnell
12: Mechanics in the Eighteenth Century, Sandro Caparrini, and Craig Fraser
13: Laplace and the Physics of Short-Range Forces, Robert Fox
14: Electricity and Magnetism to Volta, Jed Buchwald
Part III: Fashioning the Discipline: from Natural Philosophy to Physics
15: Optics in the Nineteenth Century, Jed Buchwald
16: Thermal Physics and Thermodynamics, Hasok Chang
17: Engineering Energy: Constructing a New Physics for Victorian Britain, Crosbie Smith
18: Electromagnetism and Field Physics, Friedrich Steinle
19: Electrodynamics from Thomson and Maxwell to Hertz, Jed Buchwald
20: From Workshop to Factory: The evolution of Instrument Making Industry, 1850-1930, Paolo Brenni
21: Physics Textbooks and Textbook Physics in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Josep Simon
22: Physics and Medicine, Iwan Morus
23: Physics and Metrology, Kathy Olesko
Part IV: Modern Physics
24: Rethinking 'Classical Physics', Graeme Gooday and Daniel Mitchell
25: The Emergence of Statistical Mechanics, Olivier Darrigol and Jürgen Renn
26: Three and a Half Principles: The Origins of Modern Relativity Theory, Daniel Kennefick
27: Quantum Physics, Suman Seth
28: The Silicon Tide: Relations between Things Epistemic and Things of Function in the Semiconductor World, Terry Shinn
29: Physics and Cosmology, Helge Kragh
· · · · · · (收起)

用户评价

这部作品的学术严谨性令人印象深刻，它所引用的原始资料和二次文献的深度和广度，无疑确立了其在相关研究领域中的权威地位。随便翻开任何一章，都能看到详尽的脚注和尾注系统，每一个论点背后都有扎实的文献支撑，这为后续的深入研究提供了坚实可靠的跳板。我注意到编纂者非常注重跨学科的视角，书中不仅涵盖了纯粹的理论物理进展，还穿插了对科学仪器制造技术的演变、物理学与数学交叉领域的互动，甚至是不同国家和文化背景下科学共同体的差异性发展路径。这种全景式的考察，使得我们对“物理史”的理解不再局限于几个著名的“天才”及其公式，而是看到了一个复杂、充满张力、与人类文明进程紧密交织的宏大图景。对于任何希望从事严肃学术研究的人来说，这本书的参考价值是无可替代的。

这本书的装帧设计简直是一场视觉盛宴，厚重的精装外壳透露出一种历史的沉淀感，拿到手上就能感受到它非同寻常的分量。书脊上的字体选择典雅又不失现代感，墨绿色与金色的搭配，仿佛在向读者诉说着物理学跨越时空的辉煌历程。我特别喜欢封面设计中那种抽象的星云图案，它不是那种教科书式的死板插图，而是富有艺术气息的对宇宙奥秘的隐喻，让人在翻开扉页之前就已经对即将踏入的知识殿堂充满了敬畏。内页的纸张质地也相当考究，触感细腻，即便是长时间的阅读也不会感到疲劳，而且印刷的清晰度极高，无论是复杂的公式推导还是历史人物的照片，都展现出惊人的细节。这本书的排版布局也极为用心，采用了宽边距设计，为读者留出了充足的批注和思考的空间，这对于深入研究历史文献的学者来说，简直是贴心至极的设计。它的实体存在本身就是一种阅读的仪式感，让每一次翻阅都成为一种对知识的珍视和致敬。

初次接触这本书的目录结构时，我感到一种近乎震撼的系统性。它并非简单地按照时间线索罗列历史事件，而是将物理学的发展脉络分解为若干个高度专业化、相互关联又彼此独立的专题模块。这种结构安排显示出编纂者对物理学史的深刻洞察力，他们成功地在宏观的叙事与微观的细节之间找到了完美的平衡点。例如，对经典力学向量子力学的范式转移的论述，不是孤立地讲述普朗克或爱因斯坦的贡献，而是将其置于当时的哲学思潮和社会背景之下进行多维度的剖析。阅读这些章节时，我明显感觉到作者群并非仅仅是历史记录者，更是出色的叙事大师，他们将那些看似枯燥的实验发现和理论构建，编织成了一部扣人心弦的知识探索史诗，使得即便是那些我原本以为很难理解的理论萌芽阶段，也变得逻辑清晰、引人入胜，极大地提升了我的学术视野。

这本书的真正价值，在于它为我们提供了一种理解“科学是如何运作”的元认知框架。它不仅仅是关于“发生了什么”的历史记录，更深层次上，它展示了科学共同体在面对未知时如何构建知识、如何建立共识、以及在面对突破性发现时如何进行社会和智识上的调适。通过对不同历史阶段的科学范式转变的深入剖析，读者可以清晰地看到，即便是被奉为圭臬的物理学定律，也并非一蹴而就的永恒真理，而是特定历史时空下的最佳解释模型。这种动态的历史观，对于当今仍在快速迭代的现代物理研究者来说，无疑是一剂清醒剂——它提醒我们，今天的成就，也可能成为未来研究者审视和超越的对象。这本书提供了一种历史的纵深感，让人在仰望星空的同时，也脚踏实地地理解科学进步的艰辛与不易。

阅读体验上，这本书的文字风格呈现出一种令人愉悦的多样性，这显然得益于汇集了众多不同领域专家的心血。有些章节的论述风格极为精炼和内敛，充满了严谨的学术论证，仿佛置身于顶级的研讨会现场；而另一些关于早期物理学探索的叙述，则充满了文学性的描绘，笔触生动，仿佛能让人嗅到早期实验室里化学试剂的味道。这种风格上的差异，使得长篇阅读过程中的认知负荷得到了有效分散，始终保持着新鲜感。我特别欣赏其中几位作者对科学哲学问题的探讨，他们没有回避物理学发展中那些充满争议和不确定性的“灰色地带”，而是坦诚地展示了科学真理是如何在不断的自我修正和激烈辩论中逐渐成型的。这种对待知识的不确定性的开放态度，比任何单一的结论都更有启发性。

第一章怼Steven Shapin称科学革命不存在的论点非常精彩:"the book does not give reasons for thinking there was none [scientific revolution], as might be expected, but goes on to describe the same sort of material, in much the same way, as other surveys do." "One reason that the debate has been fruitful is that participants left fuzzy the concept of revolution..."

第一章怼Steven Shapin称科学革命不存在的论点非常精彩:"the book does not give reasons for thinking there was none [scientific revolution], as might be expected, but goes on to describe the same sort of material, in much the same way, as other surveys do." "One reason that the debate has been fruitful is that participants left fuzzy the concept of revolution..."

第一章怼Steven Shapin称科学革命不存在的论点非常精彩:"the book does not give reasons for thinking there was none [scientific revolution], as might be expected, but goes on to describe the same sort of material, in much the same way, as other surveys do." "One reason that the debate has been fruitful is that participants left fuzzy the concept of revolution..."

第一章怼Steven Shapin称科学革命不存在的论点非常精彩:"the book does not give reasons for thinking there was none [scientific revolution], as might be expected, but goes on to describe the same sort of material, in much the same way, as other surveys do." "One reason that the debate has been fruitful is that participants left fuzzy the concept of revolution..."

第一章怼Steven Shapin称科学革命不存在的论点非常精彩:"the book does not give reasons for thinking there was none [scientific revolution], as might be expected, but goes on to describe the same sort of material, in much the same way, as other surveys do." "One reason that the debate has been fruitful is that participants left fuzzy the concept of revolution..."