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Einstein/Einswrwin/Evolution Of Physics

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Posted by Brian Kirk Parquette on March 12, 2002 19:11:22 UTC

Albert Einstein & Leopold infeld 'The Evolution of Physics' © 1938. ['all bets are off'] , ['Einswrwin']-if you want a better copy of this data buy the book
[the Rise of the Mechanical View

The great mystery story ... The first clew ... Vectors

The riddle of motion ... One clew remains . . . Is heat a substance? ... The roller-coaster . . . The rate of exchange . . . The philosophical background ... The kinetic theory of matter.

THE GREAT MYSTERY STORY

In imagination there exists the perfect mystery story. Such a story presents all the essential clews, and compels us to form our own theory of the case. If we follow the plot carefully we arrive at the complete solution for ourselves just before the author's disclosure at the end of the book. The solution itself, contrary to those of inferior mysteries, does not disappoint us; moreover, it appears at the very moment we expect it.

Can we liken the reader of such a book to the scientists, who throughout successive generations continue to seek solutions of the mysteries in the book of nature? The comparison is false and will have to be abandoned later, but it has a modicum of justification which may be extended and modified to make it more appropriate to the endeavor of science to solve the mystery of the universe.

This great mystery story is still unsolved. We cannot even be sure that it has a final solution. The reading has already given us much; it has taught us the [4] The Evolution of Physics

rudiments of the language of nature; it has enabled us to understand many of the clews, and has been a source of joy and excitement in the oftentimes painful advance of science. But we realize that in spite of all the volumes read and understood we are still far from a complete solution, if, indeed, such a thing exists at all. At every stage we try to find an explanation consistent with the clews already discovered. Tentatively accepted theories have explained many of the facts, but no general solution compatible with all known clews has yet been evolved. Very often a seemingly perfect theory has proved inadequate in the light of further reading. New facts appear, contradicting the theory or unexplained by it. The more we read, the more fully do we appreciate the perfect construction of the book, even though a complete solution seems to recede as we advance.

In nearly every detective novel since the admirable stories of Conan Doyle there comes a time where the investigator has collected all the facts he needs for at least some phase of his problem. These facts often seem quite strange, incoherent, and wholly unrelated. The great detective, however, realizes that no further investigation is needed at the moment, and that only pure thinking will lead to a correlation of the facts collected. So he plays his violin, or lounges in his armchair enjoying a pipe, when suddenly, by Jove, he has it! Not only does he have an explanation for the clews at hand, but he knows that certain other events must have happened. Since he now knows exactly where to look for it, he may go out, if he likes, to collect further confirmation for his theory.

The scientist reading the book of nature, if we may

The Rise of the Mechanical View (5)

be allowed to repeat the trite phrase, must find the solution for himself, for he cannot, as impatient readers of other stories often do, turn to the end of the book. In our case the reader is also the investigator, seeking to explain, at least in part, the relation of events to their rich context. To obtain even a partial solution the scientist must collect the unordered facts available and make them coherent and understandable by creative thought.

It is our aim, in the following pages, to describe in broad outline that work of physicists which corresponds to the pure thinking of the investigator. We shall be chiefly concerned with the role of thoughts and ideas in the adventurous search for knowledge of the physical world.

THE FIRST CLEW [we'll see']

Attempts to read the great mystery story are as old as human thought itself. Only a little over three hundred years ago, however, did scientists begin to understand the language of the story. Since that time, the age of Galileo and, Newton, the reading has proceeded rapidly. Techniques of investigation, systematic methods of finding and following clews, have been developed. Some of the riddles of nature have been solved although many of the solutions have proved temporary and superficial in the light of further research.

A most fundamental problem, for thousands of years wholly obscured by its complications, is that of motion. All those motions we observe- in nature, that of a stone thrown into the air, a ship sailing the sea, a cart pushed along the street, are in reality very intricate.
(~6~) The Evolution of Physics

To understand these phenomena it is wise to begin with the simplest possible cases, and proceed gradually to the more complicated ones. Consider a body at rest, where there is no motion at all. To change the position of such a body it is necessary to exert some influence upon it, to push it or lift it, or let other bodies, such as horses or steam engines, act upon it. Our intuitive idea is that motion is connected with the acts of pushing, lifting or pulling. Repeated experience would make us risk the further statement that we must push harder if we wish to move the body faster. It seems natural to conclude that the stronger the action exerted on a body, the greater will be its speed. A four-horse carriage goes faster than a carriage drawn by only two horses. Intuition thus tells us that speed is essentially connected with action.

It is 2 familiar fact to readers of detective fiction that a false clew muddles the story and postpones the solution. The method of reasoning dictated by intuition was wrong and led to false ideas of motion which were held for centuries. Aristotle's great authority throughout Europe was perhaps the chief reason for the long belief in this intuitive idea. We read in the Mechanics, for two thousand years attributed to him:

The moving body comes to a standstill when the force which pushes it along can no longer so act as to push it.

The discovery and use of scientific reasoning by Galileo was one of the most important achievements in the history of human thought, and marks the real beginning of physics. This discovery taught us that intuitive conclusions based on immediate observation {([The Rise of the Mechanical View 7])}

-are not always to be trusted, for they sometimes lead to the wrong clews.

But where does intuition go wrong? Can it possibly be wrong to say that a carriage drawn by four horses must travel faster than one drawn by only two?

Let us examine the fundamental facts of motion more closely, starting with simple everyday experiences familiar to mankind since the beginning of civilization and gained in the hard struggle for existence.

Suppose that someone going along a level road with

1-1

a pushcart suddenly stops pushing. The cart will go on, Mn movin' for a short distance before coming to rest. 9

We ask: how is it possible to increase this distance? There are various ways, such as oiling the wheels, and making the road very smooth. The more easily the wheels turn, and the smoother the road, the longer the cart will go on moving. And just what has been done by the oiling and smoothing? Only this: the external influences have been made smaller. The effect of what is called friction has been diminished, both in the wheels and between the wheels and the road. This is already a theoretical interpretation of the observable evidence, an interpretation which is, in fact, arbitrary. One significant step further and we shall have the right clew. Imagine a road perfectly smooth, and wheels with no friction at all. Then there would be nothing to stop the cart, so that it would run forever. This conclusion is reached only by thinking of an idealized experiment, which can never be actually performed, since it is impossible to eliminate all external influences. The idealized experiment shows the clew which really formed the foundation of the mechanics of motion. [Terra incognita Revisited]

8 The Evolution of Physics

Comparing the two methods of approaching the problem we can say: the intuitive idea is -- the greater the action the greater the velocity. Thus the velocity shows whether or not external forces are acting on a body. The new clew found by Galileo is: if a body is neither pushed, puffed, nor acted on in any other way, or, more briefly, if no external forces act on a body, it moves uniformly, that is, always with the same velocity along a straight line. Thus, the velocity does not show whether or not external forces are acting on a body. Galileo's conclusion, the correct one, was formulated a generation later by Newton as the law of inertia. It is usually the first thing about physics which we learn by heart in school, and some of us may remember it:

Every body perseveres in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed thereon.

We have seen that this law of inertia cannot be derived directly from experiment, but only by speculative thinking consistent with observation. The idealized experiment can never be actually performed, although it leads to a profound understanding of real experiments.

From the variety of complex motions in the world around us we choose as our first example uniform motion. This is the simplest, because there are no external forces acting. Uniform motion can, however, never be realized; a stone thrown from a tower, a cart pushed along a road can never move absolutely uniformly because we cannot eliminate the influence of external forces.]-bkparque]

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