History Biographies, History, Philosophy of Physics

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The discussion highlights the often-overlooked contributions of lesser-known physicists in the field, emphasizing that many have made significant advancements without receiving the recognition they deserve. Participants express disappointment that only controversial figures tend to gain prominence, while countless others remain in obscurity. Various biographies and historical accounts of physicists are shared, including works on notable figures like the Curies and lesser-known scientists like Titus Pankey. The conversation also touches on the importance of collecting and sharing these narratives to enrich the understanding of physics history. Overall, the thread advocates for greater appreciation of all contributors to the field of physics.
  • #181
TensorCalculus said:
Indeed - what do you mean by "talking circles around braniacs?"

I meant we could bluff our way through it employing our superiour language skills, but I fear it would fare ill. :smile:
 
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  • #182
TensorCalculus said:
Not the solution manual :cry: now I have to fight the temptation to look at it every time I get frustrated (but thanks, I like being able to check my answers)
The good thing is the search feature. I use it to look up tricks. E.g., when dealing with the various means, or generally inequalities, I find them there fast. DYK that there is a Newton inequality, or a harmonic mean?
 
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  • #183
This is certainly neither a detour nor a derailment. It adds oomph to the thread. It might be beyond me personally but I'll certainly have a look, though I suspect I'll end up in the shallow end.

EDIT: In fact, it was about time the "History & Philosophy" of physics met a real problem. :smile:
 
  • #184
sbrothy said:
I meant we could bluff our way through it employing our superiour language skills, but I fear it would fare ill. :smile:
hahaha that sounds like it would be fun, actually
fresh_42 said:
The good thing is the search feature. I use it to look up tricks. E.g., when dealing with the various means, or generally inequalities, I find them there fast. DYK that there is a Newton inequality, or a harmonic mean?
Fair enough.
I mean I knew about the harmonic mean but not Newtonian Inequalities... a quick google search showed me this...
1753212196560.webp

I have to admit, I opened the page that defined an "elementary symmetric polynomial" - glanced at it, and closed it immediately :cry:
 
  • #185
I'm having trouble finding the current challenge. This doesn't bode well does it?

Is there a link for those of us in the outskirts of the IQ bell curve? :smile:

Ah welp, I'll find it later when I have proper time... although I too fear it's beyond me...

EDIT: meant of course the beginning of the curve. I think. Now I'm being scatterbrained again. Gotta go take care of chores....
 
  • #186
sbrothy said:
I'm having trouble finding the current challenge. This doesn't bode well does it?

Is there a link for those of us in the outskirts of the IQ bell curve? :smile:

Ah welp, I'll find it later when I have proper time... although I too fear it's beyond me...

EDIT: meant of course the beginning of the curve. I think. Now I'm being scatterbrained again. Gotta go take care of chores....
Oi! Don't talk like that!

In any case, you're better than me who didn't even bother looking for the current challenge and instead just decided to just stick to the ones that I got linked to, which are of course a bit outdated...
 
  • #187
Nah, I remember having a bit of a sniff at some point but decided I lacked the concentration and, more importantly, the math skills. But now, with a direct challenge in my "math-nemic"* "History & Philosphy" thread I should perhaps give it a go, if nothing else....

* Portmanteau of "mathematics" and "anemic". :)
 
  • #188
sbrothy said:
Nah, I remember having a bit of a sniff at some point but decided I lacked the concentration and, more importantly, the math skills. But now, with a direct challenge in my "math-nemic"* "History & Philosphy" thread I should perhaps give it a go, if nothing else....

* Portmanteau of "mathematics" and "anemic". :)
Anyone can develop maths skills, the important factor is whether you have the free time to do so or not :)

proceeds to have to google both Portmanteau and Anemic only to realise anemic just means you have anemia how did I not realise that just by looking at the word HuH
For a Brit, my English vocabulary is lacking slightly, isn't it
 
  • #189
What I meant was that I have mathematical anemia. :smile:

But yeah, I should abstain from inventing my own words. :woot:
 
  • #190
We can play some Scrabble using the Collins/SOWPODS official dictionary. The one I use for my Wordle cheater program. This will do wonders for you vocabulary!

Internet Scrabble Club (Remember to select British English!). The British dictionary is so much more fun than the American. My handle is sbrothy, but I'm a little rusty...

EDIT: No my handle was sbrothy after all.

My ELO reating is 624 but you cannot trust it. I once kinda freaked a lady out because I kept writing words like "rape", "murder", "serial", etc. I didn't even try to be a weirdo, the words just presented themselves like that in my rack and it was so funny I couldn't help myself. After some explaining we ended up friends though. :smile:
 
  • #191
sbrothy said:
We can play some Scrabble using the Collins/SOWPODS official dictionary. The one I use for my Wordle cheater program. This will do wonders for you vocabulary!

Internet Scrabble Club (Remember to select British English!). The British dictionary is so much more fun than the American. My handle is sbrothy, but I'm a little rusty...

EDIT: No my handle was sbrothy after all.
I am so unsurprised that you play scrabble it is actually crazy
Time to give it a shot (and probably fail abysmally: but it's good practice for English GCSE and good fun!)
what do you mean your handle was sbrothy?
sbrothy said:
My ELO reating is 624 but you cannot trust it. I once kinda freaked a lady out because I kept writing words like "rape", "murder", "serial", etc. I didn't even try to be a weirdo, the words just presented themselves like that in my rack and it was so funny I couldn't help myself. After some explaining we ended up friends though. :smile:
I would be scared too - poor woman must have been so freaked out :cry: . That's quite funny though - not going to lie.
 
  • #192
TensorCalculus said:
I am so unsurprised that you play scrabble it is actually crazy
Time to give it a shot (and probably fail abysmally: but it's good practice for English GCSE and good fun!)
what do you mean your handle was sbrothy?

I would be scared too - poor woman must have been so freaked out :cry: . That's quite funny though - not going to lie.
I initially thought my handle was GeorgeDorn but I forgot to put an EDIT tag in when I corrected it as I normally do.
 
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  • #193
I've made an account: not going to lie, I think before I start playing or anything, I'm going to do a bit of nifty coding to make the frontend a little prettier, because whoever designed this frontend is criminal:
1753296673314.webp
 
  • #194
Haha. yeah, it's pretty ugly!
 
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  • #195
@fresh_42 , I'm still working on that old problem although I may still be relying on brute force until I really understand what's going on. It may take a while! :smile:

In the meantime:

Slow neutrons in Palermo: a forgotten conference by Enrico Fermi

On October 22, 1934, in a famous experiment, Enrico Fermi and his colleagues discovered that a significant increase in induced radioactivity can be obtained when neutrons are slowed down by means of hydrogen atoms. This discovery and its explanation earned him the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics. One year later, on October 1935, Fermi held a public speech in Palermo, Italy, presenting his findings at the 24th congress of the Italian Society for the Progress of Sciences. The transcription of his speech, entitled "Recenti risultati della radioattività artificiale" (Recent Results in Artificial Radioactivity), was soon published in Italy. The published text is one of the very first articles in which Fermi describes the success of the Via Panisperma boys and how he came to discover that hydrogen atoms slowed the neutrons. Unfortunately, the content of the original Italian speech has never been republished since and was forgotten. Similarly, a translation published internally by the US Atomic Energy Commission is not publicly available and is probably lost. In this work, we include the transcription of the original article in Italian, and we also propose an English translation to make the text available worldwide to a broader public.
 
  • #196
TensorCalculus said:
I've made an account: not going to lie, I think before I start playing or anything, I'm going to do a bit of nifty coding to make the frontend a little prettier, because whoever designed this frontend is criminal:
View attachment 363632
I think they talked about turning it into an app. wxWidgets or Qt could probably compete. It's not rocket science but I happen to know something about the administrative side of development and apart from not being pretty, it takes a lot of discipline.

It's a little like starting a band. People are surprised about the amount of discipline involved if it's not to end in a mess. I meet a girl from time to time who "wants to start a band" but have no idea how much authority it takes to make the drummer be quiet for instance! :smile:

Or indeed, selling girl scout cookies. Someone just have to take the lead. It's the human condition.
 
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  • #199
Hah! Me neither! But they're an impressive bunch! :woot:

EDIT: I saw this "[...] The work may be useful as a historical resource, but there is very little biography or history, and the primary focus is on the mathematics. [...]", but decided it was too good not to post anyway.
 
  • #200
I cannot take this paper even remotely serious:

Quantum Panprotopsychism and a Consciousness-centered Universe

Even though I know panpsychism is an "established" philosophical theory, the word "panprotopsychism" just gives me the screaming heebie-jeebies! And what is it with connecting consciousness with quantum mechanics? Yeah I know, the observer thingy and whatnot but it just reeks of meta-metaphysics!

It may be that it's prefectly serious (certainly the authors seem to take it seriously). I just can't.
 
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  • #201
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  • #202
sbrothy said:
I cannot take this paper even remotely serious:

Quantum Panprotopsychism and a Consciousness-centered Universe

Even though I know panpsychism is an "established" philosophical theory, the word "panprotopsychism" just gives me the screaming heebie-jeebies! And what is it with connecting consciousness with quantum mechanics? Yeah I know, the observer thingy and whatnot but it just reeks of meta-metaphysics!

It may be that it's prefectly serious (certainly the authors seem to take it seriously). I just can't.
I understood just about none of that :cry: and gave up a couple of pages in in favour of finishing the book I was reading

sbrothy said:
On a more serious note and spurred on by this thread: RIP Jayant Narlikar (1938-2025)

I dug this one up:

Jayant Vishnu Narlikar
😞 🙏
 
  • #203
sbrothy said:
I cannot take this paper even remotely serious:

Quantum Panprotopsychism and a Consciousness-centered Universe

Even though I know panpsychism is an "established" philosophical theory, the word "panprotopsychism" just gives me the screaming heebie-jeebies! And what is it with connecting consciousness with quantum mechanics? Yeah I know, the observer thingy and whatnot but it just reeks of meta-metaphysics!

It may be that it's prefectly serious (certainly the authors seem to take it seriously). I just can't.
I didn't want to investigate this paper further than reading the abstract since I share your opinion. Considering consciousness as a consequence of quantum mechanics isn't new. It tries to link its randomness, better, uncertainty to the randomness of individuality. To me, this is an artificial bridge resulting from the lack of understanding of both.

What remains is the observation that the universe created an entity, us, that investigates itself, and it knows about this fact. Hence, the university has self-awareness, and the philosophical consequences of this observation are part of this investigation. Whether this is sufficient to attribute consciousness to the universe is a different, philosophical question. And whether this is due to quantum mechanical principles is a bit far-fetched in my opinion. To me, it is more of a modern version of worshiping the sun god than a real correlation or cause. However, as long as people do not know what the sun is, or Kepler's laws, as long as there will be people justifying the sun god.
 
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  • #204
Then there's the esoteric philosophy of pre-post-panprotopsychism.
 
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  • #205
Hornbein said:
Then there's the esoteric philosophy of pre-post-panprotopsychism.
Yeah, it turtles all the way down! :woot:
 
  • #206
This is at odds with the current view about the human condition that was strongly influenced by a science based on classical mechanicism, and led to nihilism and existentialism in late 19th-century Europe, and more recently to the rise of anti-foundationalists perspectives. The centrality of consciousness resulting from the incorporation of a quantum ontology into our worldview leads us to reconsider the nihilistic view and conclude that we live in a world in which a precise physical order leads to people capable of accessing a transcendent phenomenal realm.

To me, this is word salad. It seems to be in line with what other aging scientists have published at the end of their lives. I'm particularly thinking about Michael Francis Atiyah and his claim to have solved the RH, or of what I personally witnessed, a lecture by Konrad Zuse in the early 90s, and his early 80s about his current "research". It is a bit sad when such stories overshadow earlier, great achievements.
 
  • #207
Speaking of word salad. It kind of reminds of Immanuel Kant, who was apparently a little vain:

"[...] Kant was baptized as Emanuel and later changed the spelling of his name to Immanuel after learning Hebrew. [...]"
---- Wikipedia (cf: Kuehn, Manfred (2001). Kant: a Biography. Cambridge University Press.)

Maybe being Jewish was just in at the time?!

Sorry for the aside. What I wanted to say was that, when I was younger, I tried to read his books but found it nigh on impossible. Of course much of it was due to the fact that I'm just not that smart, and that my attention span leaves a lot to be desired, especially in the context of metaphysic philosophers such as Kant. Still, as a product of his time, he argued:

"[...] that the human understanding is the source of the general laws of nature that structure all our experience; and that human reason gives itself the moral law, which is our basis for belief in God, freedom, and immortality. Therefore, scientific knowledge, morality, and religious belief are mutually consistent and secure because they all rest on the same foundation of human autonomy, which is also the final end of nature according to the teleological worldview of reflecting judgment that Kant introduces to unify the theoretical and practical parts of his philosophical system. [...]"

(Again one of those words which gives the willies: "teleological".)

Although he may have been inspired by Newton he couldn't escape his religious views.

"[...] Although now recognized as one of the greatest works in the history of philosophy, the Critique disappointed Kant's readers upon its initial publication. The book was long, over 800 pages in the original German edition, and written in a convoluted style. Kant was quite upset with its reception. [...]

I'm not entirely sure what the word "greatest" is supposed to mean here. I can just imagine him complaining that he was surrounded by idiots! I guess it's really no wonder I couldn't make it to the end. :smile:
 
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  • #208
sbrothy said:
Speaking of word salad. It kind of reminds of Immanuel Kant, who was apparently a little vain:


---- Wikipedia (cf: Kuehn, Manfred (2001). Kant: a Biography. Cambridge University Press.)

Maybe being Jewish was just in at the time?!

Sorry for the aside. What I wanted to say was that, when I was younger, I tried to read his books but found it nigh on impossible. Of course much of it was due to the fact that I'm just not that smart, and that my attention span leaves a lot to be desired, especially in the context of metaphysic philosophers such as Kant. Still, as a product of his time, he argued:



(Again one of those words which gives the willies: "teleological".)

Although he may have been inspired by Newton he couldn't escape his religious views.



I'm not entirely sure what the word "greatest" is supposed to mean here. I can just imagine him complaining that he was surrounded by idiots! I guess it's really no wonder I couldn't make it to the end. :smile:
Immanuel Kant is a name I've heard again and again in our PER (Philosophy, Ethics, Religion) lessons. Some of his philosophies are really interesting.
That being said, I also find them extremely confusing. My brain often ends up going on tangents after PER lessons.
Newton himself couldn't escape his religious views: he was definitely deeply religious and I remember reading in some book somewhere about how he chose to believe in absolute time because he thought it would violate his religious views if time were otherwise.

Don't quote me on that last one though... I really can't remember where I got it from...
 
  • #209
Yeah, about Newton there was also something about his rotating bucket-on-a-rope thought-experiment that he knew was wrong but he couldn't put his finger on it. Can't remember if it violated the no-special-frame-of-reference or it was more involved. I'm just about to turn in. Don't want to read a lot right now....

EDIT: Or maybe he *could* put his finger on it but choose to ignore it.
 
  • #210
sbrothy said:
Yeah, about Newton there was also something about his rotating bucket-on-a-rope thought-experiment that he knew was wrong but he couldn't put his finger on it. Can't remember if it violated the no-special-frame-of-reference or it was more involved. I'm just about to turn in. Don't want to read a lot right now....

EDIT: Or maybe he *could* put his finger on it but choose to ignore it.
Oh I haven't heard of that specific one: though I can imagine it was the frame of reference thing: maybe something about the pseudo "centrifugal force" that he couldn't put his finger on.
Time to make the extremely mature and totally responsible decision, the opposite of what you did: read up on it and stay up later than I should. (Pray it doesn't take more than 10mins to get to the bottom of) :woot:
Meh, I had a maths problem to finish anyway. wasn't going to sleep on time either way is my excuse.
 

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