From Aristotle to today- the history of physics that everyone should know and read. Zain Latif Rehan Latif Zachary Latif The man who are the greatest benefactors of man. 383 BC - Aristotle was born in Stageira in 383 BC. He wrote Nicomachean Ethics and Physics. He had occupations including mathematician and physicist. Aristotles Nicomachean Ethics was written around 340 BC. It is probably named after either his father or son, who were both named Nicomachus. Nicomachean Ethics is Aristotles most mature work on ethics. 1605 - Sir Francis Bacon, an English philosopher, is not famous for conducting breakthrough experiments of his own, but rather for popularizing what would come to be called the scientific method. If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties, he wrote in 1605. 1633 - In the end, Galileo developed Laws of Physics which endure today, and which proved Aristotle wrong. His lifes work, revered today, was not judged kindly by the authorities of the time. In 1633 the Pope found Galileo guilty of heresy for holding a belief that countered the Holy Scripture, and was condemned to house arrest, under guard, for his remaining life. 1642 - Galileo died in 1642, and in the same year Newton was born. When 24 years old he began to think of gravity extending to the orb of the moon, and before the end of the century he had discovered and established the great law of universal gravitation. 1686 - The laws of classical mechanics were summarized in 1686 by Isaac Newton (1642- 1727) in his famous book Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. During the following 200 years, they were universally used for the theoretical interpretation of all known ...The laws of classical mechanics were summarized in 1686 by Isaac Newton (1642- 1727) in his famous book Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. During the following 200 years, they were universally used for the theoretical interpretation of all known phenomena in physics and astronomy. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, new discoveries related to the electronic structure of atoms and molecules and to the nature of light could no longer be interpreted by means of the classical Newtonian laws of mechanics. It therefore became necessary to develop a new and different type of mechanics in order to explain these newly discovered phenomena. This new branch of theoretical physics became known as quantum mechanics or wave mechanics. On 7 October 1900, the German physicist Max Planck conjured up a mathematical formula which transformed the scientific landscape as dramatically as a Richter 10 earthquake. All that came before was relegated to classical physics and recognised as little more than a special case of modern, or quantum, physics. According to theory, light was a vibration. The mathematical analysis of Plancks quanta of light was laid out by Einstein in 1905. As the 19th century ended, many scientists were proclaiming the “end of physics, ” insisting that all major theories were in place and that there was nothing left for physicists to do but to fill in the details. On June 30, 1905, with Einsteins submission of his paper “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies,” a decisive challenge had been offered to the Newtonian universe, and new worlds of inquiry would soon open. Quantum Mechanics arose from the rubble of a world view held by physicists for over 200 years. Since Isaac Newtons triumphant summation of the physical world in 1687, the universe was known to run like clockwork, obeying definite rules of cause and effect, the product of a limited set of forces acting on matter. By the turn of the 20th Century, physicists were complacently predicting the end of physics because the composition and laws of the universe were so well understood that precious little remained to be discovered or analyzed. In 1903, Albert Michelson, the first American Nobel Prize winner, confidently asserted, The most important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplemented in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote. Hawking predicted on April 29, 1980, that physics might soon achieve a complete, unified theory of nature. This prophecy was offered up by him when he presented a paper entitled “Is the End of Theoretical Physics in Sight?” This was in the speech delivered on the occasion of his appointment as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, an important chair held by Newton 300 years earlier. According to Horgan (1997, 94) only a few observers noticed that Hawking, at the end of his speech, indicated post humans and not humans as the protagonists of this conquest: “Hawking suggested that computers, given their accelerated evolution, might soon surpass their human creators in intelligence and achieve the final theory on their own.” Though Erwin Schrödinger suggested that the human mind is incapable of conceiving a model of the workings of quantum mechanics, he spent most of his career toiling on adding machines that you cranked with a big handle to add two numbers. He had never clicked a mouse, nor seen The Matrix or The Thirteenth Floor or even Star Trek. Today we are ready to think of the inconceivable; the reality of Star Trek characters will only shock us for a few hours at the most, mentally we have made the transformation to a level where we consider speed of light travel a possibility; a couple of centuries back our ancestors could not even imagine anything faster than locomotive. Our capability of conceiving a model that Erwin Schrödinger could never dream of is a sign of our fast track evolution of knowledge. Today researchers have been experimenting with two-way neural-computer communication by growing neurons on and around computer chips, or by placing electrodes in brains that are connected to computers, leading to computing prostheses for the brain. The American theoretical physicist John wheeler has the faith that humans will one day find The Answer to describe not only the final theory of physics but also the secret of life and the solution to the riddle of the universe. However, his mentor Niels Bohr had the opposing thought. Wheeler learned of Bohrs view not directly from the great man but from his son only after Bohrs death. In Is Science a Victim of its own Success? Horgan describes about various situations that make funding for basic research difficult and about different limits brought about by the advancement of science itself. He insists that in spite of these the greatest threat to sciences future is its past success. Then he anticipates that in science at its purest and grandest, i.e., in the primordial human quest to understand the universe and our place in it, further research may yield no more great revelations or revolutions but only incremental, diminishing returns. The vast majority of scientists would be content to fill in details of the great paradigms laid down by their predecessors.
Posted on: Tue, 11 Mar 2014 07:22:35 +0000
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