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Waves and Scientific Method

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 June 2023

Peter Achinstein
Peter Achinstein*
Affiliation:
Johns Hopkins University
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Extract

In 1802 a youthful Thomas Young, British physician and scientist, had the audacity to resuscitate the wave theory of light (Young 1802). For this he was excoriated by Henry Brougham (1803) in the Edinburgh Review. Brougham, a defender of the Newtonian particle theory, asserted that Young's paper was “destitute of every species of merit” because it was not based on inductions from observations but involved simply the formulation of hypotheses to explain various optical phenomena.

Type
Part VII. Mill, Whewell, and the Wave-Particle Debate
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1992 , Issue 2: Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers 1992 , 1993 , pp. 192 - 204
Copyright
Copyright © 1993 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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References

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