Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T20:49:17.423Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

10 - Imagery And Representation In Twentieth-Century Physics

from Part II - Discipline Building in the Sciences: Places, Instruments, Communication

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

By
Arthur Miller
Edited by
Mary Jo Nye
Mary Jo Nye
Affiliation:
Oregon State University
Get access

Summary

Scientists have always expressed a strong urge to think in visual images, especially today with our new and exciting possibilities for the visual display of information. We can “see” elementary particles in bubble chamber photographs. But what is the deep structure of these images? A basic problem in modern science has always been how to represent nature, both visible and invisible, with mathematics, and how to understand what these representations mean. This line of inquiry throws fresh light on the connection between common sense intuition and scientific intuition, the nature of scientific creativity, and the role played by metaphors in scientific research.

We understand, and represent, the world about us not merely through perception but with the complex interplay between perception and cognition. Representing phenomena means literally re-presenting them as either text or visual image, or a combination of the two. But what exactly are we re-presenting? What sort of visual imagery should we use to represent phenomena? Should we worry that visual imagery can be misleading?

Consider Figure 10.1, which shows the visual image offered by Aristotelian physics for a cannonball’s trajectory. It is drawn with a commonsensical Aristotelian intuition in mind. On the other hand, Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) realized that specific motions should not be imposed on nature. Rather, they should emerge from the theory’s mathematics – in this way should the book of nature be read. Figure 10.2 is Galileo’s own drawing of the parabolic fall of an object pushed horizontally off a table. It contains the noncommonsensical axiom of his new physics that all objects fall with the same acceleration, regardless of their weight, in a vacuum.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of Science , pp. 191 - 216
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2002

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bohr, Niels, “The Quantum Postulate and the Recent Development of Atomic Theory,” Nature (Supplement), (14 April 1928).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Born, Max, Heisenberg, Werner, and Jordan, Pasqual, “Zur Quantenmechanik. II,” Zeitschrift für Physik, 35 (1926).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyd, Richard, “Metaphor and Theory Change: What Is ‘Metaphor’ a Metaphor For?” in Metaphor and Thought, ed. Ortony, Andrew 2d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).Google Scholar
Broglie, Louis, “Recherches sur la théorie des quanta,” Annles de Physique, 3 (1925).Google Scholar
Einstein, Albert, “Autobiographical Notes,” in Albert Einstein: Philosopher: Scientist, ed. Schilpp, P. A., (Evanston, Ill.: Open Court, 1949).Google Scholar
Einstein, Albert, “Über einen die Erzeugung und Verwandlung des Lichtes betreffenden heuristischen Gesichtpunkt,” Annalen der Physik, 17 (1905).Google Scholar
Einstein, Albert, “Entwicklung unserer Anschauungen über das Wesen und die Konstitution der Strahlung,” Physikalische Zeitschrift, 10 (1909).Google Scholar
Galison, Peter, Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).Google Scholar
Heisenberg, Werner, “Mehrkörperproblem und Resonanz in der Quantenmechanik,” Zeitschrift für Physik, 38 (1926).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heisenberg, Werner, “Zur Quantenmechanik,” Die Naturwissenschaften, 14 (1926).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heisenberg, Werner, “Über den anschaulichen Inhalt der quantentheoretischen Kinematik und Mechanik,” Zeitschriftfür Physik, 43 (1927).Google Scholar
Heisenberg, Werner, “Über die in der Theorie der Elementarteilchen auftretende universelle Länge,” Annalen der Physik, 32 (1938).Google Scholar
Heisenberg, Werner, “Über den Bau der Atomkerne. I,” Zeitschriftfür Physik, 77 (1932).Google Scholar
Heisenberg, Werner, “Zur Quantentheorie der Elementarteilchen,” Zeitschrift fürNaturforschung, 5 (1950).Google Scholar
Holton, Gerald, Einstein, History and Other Passions (Woodbury, N.Y.: AIP Press, 1995).Google Scholar
Kaiser, David, “Stick Figure Realism: Conventions, Reification, and the Persistence of Feynman Diagrams, 1948–1964,” Representations, 70 (2000).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Smith, N. K. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1929).Google Scholar
Kramers, Hendrik A. and Heisenberg, Werner, “Über die Streuung von Strahlung durch Atome,” Zeitschrift für Physik, 31 (1925).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, A. I., “Erotica, Aesthetics, and Schrödinger’s Wave Equation,” forthcoming in Farmeloe, Graham, ed., ‘It Must Be Beautiful’: Great Equations of the Twentieth Century (London: Granta, 2002).Google Scholar
Miller, Arthur I., Imagery in Scientific Thought: Creating 20th Century Physics (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1986).Google Scholar
Miller, Arthur I., Albert Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity: Emergence (1905) and Early Interpretation (1905–1911) (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1998).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, Arthur I., “Unipolar Induction: A Case Study of the Interaction between Science and Technology,” Annals of Science, 38 (1981).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, Arthur I., Early Quantum Electrodynamics: A Source Book (Cambridge: Cambridge Universtiy Press, 1994).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, Arthur I. and Bullock, Frederik W., “Neutral Currents and the History of Scientific Ideas,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, 6 (1994).Google Scholar
Miller, Arthur I., Einstein, Picasso: Space, Time and the Beauty That Causes Havoc (New York: Basic Books, 2001).Google Scholar
Miller, I. Arthur, “Einstein’s First Steps towards General Relativity: Gedanken Experiments and Axiomatics,” Physics in Perspective, 1 (1999).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pauli, Wolfgang, Wissenschaftlicher Briefwechsel mit Bohr, Einstein, Heisenberg, u.a. I: 1919–1929, ed. Hermann, A., Meyenn, K., and Weisskopf, V. F. (Berlin: Springer, 1979).Google Scholar
Prizbaum, K., ed., Letters on Wave Mechanics: Schrödinger, Planck, Einstein, Lorentz, trans. Klein, M. J. (New York: Philosophical Library, 1967).Google Scholar
Schrödinger, Erwin, “Über das Verhältnis der Heisenberg-Born-Jordanschen Quantenmechanik zu der meinen,” Annalen der Physik, 70 (1926).Google Scholar
Schweber, Sylvan S., QED and the Men Who Made It: Feynman, Schwinger, and Tomonaga (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994).Google Scholar
Yukawa, Hideki, “On the Interaction of Elementary Particles. I,” Proceedings of the Phsyico-Mathematical Society of Japan, 3 (1935).Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×