The Bearing of Philosophy on the History of the Special Theory of Relativity

Author(s):  
Adolf Grünbaum
Author(s):  
Konstantin A. Barsht ◽  

The article analyzes the life path and tragic death of the philosopher Grigory Borisovich Itelson (1852–1926) emigrated from Russia. According to the as­sumption put forward in the article, he became the prototype of Albert Lichten­berg, the hero in the story of Andrey Platonov Garbage Wind (1933), which de­scribes the fate of a lonely German scientist, “the physicist of outer space”, who was killed by the Nazis for protesting against fascism. The article analyzes a number of coincidences between the fate of G.B. Itelson and the philosopher Lichtenberg described in the story Garbage Wind, in particular, the way of life and the circumstances of death. The author of the article finds in the text of Platonov’s story some allusions to G.B. Itelson – features of the worldview, pub­lication by the hero of the story of the book The Universe as a desolate space, burned in the square by the fascists, which is seen as a hint of the book by Felix Eberti Stars and World History. Thoughts about space, published by G.B. Itelson in 1923. The author analyzes the reason for Platonov’s appeal to the personality of Itelson, who was a personal friend of A. Einstein and the main translator of his books into Russian. Through these publications in the 1920s, A. Platonov got acquainted with the General and Special Theory of Relativity, which had a strong influence on the writer’s worldview and largely shaped the poetics of his works. The article argues for the possibility of Platonov’s acquaintance with the obitu­ary of G.B. Itelson, written by A.A. Goldenweiser and published in the Berlin Russian newspaper Ruhl, which describes in detail the life and tragic death of the philosopher at the hands of the Nazis


1992 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chuang Liu

Over forty years after the foundations of the special theory of relativity had been securely laid, a heated debate, beginning in 1965, about the correct formulation of relativistic thermodynamics raged in the physics literature. Prior to 1965, relativistic thermodynamics was considered one of the most secure relativistic theories and one of the most simple and elegant examples of relativization in physics. It is, as its name apparently suggests, the result of the application of the special theory of relativity to thermodynamics. The basic assumption is that the first and second laws of thermodynamics are Lorentz-invariant, and, as a result, a set of Lorentz transformations is derived from thermodynamic magnitudes, such as heat and temperature.


2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 392-401
Author(s):  
Yu. V. Shatin ◽  
I. V. Silantev

The article discusses the prerequisites for the creation of a neo-rhetorical theory of the Brussels school. The authors proceed from the premise that the doctrine created by Ch. Perelman was not a one-step act, but was the result of a change in the scientific and philosophical paradigm of the first half of the twentieth century. Despite the fact that persuasiveness as the main core of the theory of argumentation was not known to scientists, in their writings they actively promoted ideas related to the role of intuition in learning scientific truths, widely using analogy techniques and metaphors borrowed from natural languages. The main actor in the article is H. Poincaré, a famous physicist, one of the creators of the special theory of relativity, and a popularizer of science, who went down in history of its formation as an active fighter with logocentrism.


Author(s):  
Graham Hall

This paper presents a brief history of electromagnetic theory from ancient times up to the work of Maxwell and the advent of Einstein's special theory of relativity. It is divided into five convenient periods and the intention is to describe these developments for the benefit of a lay scientific audience and with the minimum of technical detail.


1988 ◽  
Vol 156 (9) ◽  
pp. 137-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anatolii A. Logunov ◽  
Yu.V. Chugreev

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