Talk:History of physics
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This histoy of physics entry is much needed. But is the text taken from somewhere else? The link below is rather similar:
Well, as a starting point, it will do.
I found a cached copy of this article at
I can't find the original, but I assume it's copyrighted. I propose we wait for the person who uploaded the article to respond, and if no response appears, we delete it. (It's possible that the person who uploaded the article is responsible for the pratt.edu article too.)
Larry
It is been edited. If it changes a lot, can it be considered a different article alltogether?
JS
Maybe, but let's not go down that route. It looks like no one has responded, so I'm going to delete it. --Larry
New text copied from the body of the Physics article -- this is hopefully a fresh article, and not plagiarised. This copy can now be expanded to make a fuller history of physics...
Mr. 207.35.6.2
Am I the only one who finds it unfortunate that History of Physics has been converted (on June 24) into a rant sandwich? On top, a slice of Antiquity; on the bottom, a slice of modern science; between, a long and bellicose encomium to the glories of Islamic civilization and Islamic science: astronomy, chemistry, mathematics, and even a passing mention of physics!
I presume that no one wants to edit out these opinionated and mostly ill-substantiated irrelevancies for the same reason I don't: to do so would be impolitic and downright rude, and even intellectually questionable. After all, Islamic contributions do need to be covered here. At least, I presume they do; I couldn't prove the point from my own knowledge.
I am inclined, in protest, to contribute an entirely factual, footnoted entry on the way in which, arguably, the growth of physical science was hindered by one particular Islamic contribution. It will be a fine day, though, when someone with the requisite historical information and the gift of writing a sober presentation zaps the whole thing (as expanded, perhaps, by me) and puts in something that will actually inform us about Islamic physics.
Dandrake 23:13 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Having decided not to be childish about it, I have simply cut the material referenced above, leaving only the parts relevant to the history of physics. Sad to say, this is almost nothing; we still need a sane treatment of Islamic work, not to mention that of other civilizations.
By the way, is there not still too much astronomy in this history of physics?
Roger Bacon is back in, until someone demonstrates that everything he did (including pushing for more science in Europe?) was stolen from Islamic sources.
Dandrake 17:58 13 Jul 2003 (UTC)
- So were you going to remove this page from wikipedia:pages needing attention, now you've fixed this? Martin
Oops. My mistake. Thank you. Done. Dandrake 22:39 17 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Maybe I need to ask this once a year: Why is this so-called history of physics actually a history of astronomy almost exclusively (with some mathematics) in its central section? This is all the sillier in that there was hardly any connection between the two in that period. Perhaps someone needs to zap all that superfluous material; doing so would, regrettably, remove most of the non-European material, but that could be an incentive for someone to provide some non-Euopean physics, which is the point, right? Dandrake 08:08, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)
- I was actually following the italicized suggestions in the article. If you want to steer its contents, then how about updating the italicized suggestions. Since Physics is the fundamental science, one can argue that the measurements of the earth's precession and the work of Aristarchus and Hipparchus are physics, and that Al-Batani was improving on the work of Hipparchus. It is hard to critique the men who worked in metallurgy, astronomy, optics, etc, as not working in physics for not knowing the physics we know now. And you could argue that the history starts with the Scientific Revolution. The rest is a kind of pre-history, with Physics being born from Astronomy. Ancheta Wis 19:11, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- OK. The structure of the article now shows that section 1 could logically go into History of Science and that section 2 scientific revolution is classical physics and beyond. I shrink from moving section 1's contents into History of Science because I understand that others are working on that article. The current article is attempting to show the unity of physics and the other sciences. Ancheta Wis 08:21, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)
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- Well, I've no objection to the recent material about modern cosmology and the like; that clearly is physics, and it's a significant addition to the article. I still have problems with the older stuff, and the text really does make me wonder, did anybody but Europeans do anything in what we now understand as being physics? I think I see your point about separating the sections at the scientific revolution, and I'll have to think about it more. Dandrake 17:50, Aug 5, 2004 (UTC)
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- Continuing the same theme: The new list of Chinese items consists of good and valuable things; but it's not physics. The problem, I think, is this whole series of headings about "contributions to the sciences". These quite simply belong in an article on history of science, or History of science and technology. It's quite true that any science or technology is directly connected to physics (in physicists' view, derived from it), but that's of no use in setting up encyclopedia articles. At present, a person looking for history of physics finds irrelevant stuff. What's even more objectionable: a person looking for science and technology, perhaps sepcifically for Chinese and Islamic s&t, will miss this material entirely, unless he/she/it happens to take a specific interest in physics and looks here. So why not stop gabbing and just do it? Well, I think I'll do that; but contributors are often annoyed when their stuff gets boldly moved around, so I'd rather ruffle feathers here ahead of time than with a sudden change. Dandrake 20:15, Aug 8, 2004 (UTC)
- Fine with me, do you want to ask FastFission? I think he is the one who is working on HST. Ancheta Wis 11:19, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)
[edit] Rival theories
When the Richard Feynman article got nominated for Featured status, I was forced to add content. This led me to the natural rivalry between competing physicists. I would like to begin adding some of this content, such as Feynman and Gell-mann etc. I propose to outline this on this Talk page, wait for discussion, and then put the vetted material on the article page when it is acceptable. Ancheta Wis 11:16, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)
[edit] History of physics
Proceeding with the changes I outlined before. Sections on "X contributions to the sciences" are going to History of science and technology for all values of X. Text that is actually about physics is retained here; unfortunately, that's next to nothing. It seems to me that we should be liberal, though, in retaining work in other fields (e.g., mathematics) where it contributed to the history of physics.
One is tempted to leave sections on "X Contributions to physics" even where they'd be blank, as an incentive and reminder for new contributions. But I think it would look too much like a deliberate affront; and what Wikipedian needs that kind of reminder anyway? Dandrake 01:26, Aug 21, 2004 (UTC)
- The history of science was getting too long, in mav's estimation. So I am looking for a new home for some of the content. Would it be allright with everyone if I injected some of the content here? Ancheta Wis 19:35, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I'm a newbie here so I'm not sure whether to post this at the top of this page or the bottom. Please move it if I've done it wrong. Anyway, the history section talks about Ptolemy and his Geocentric model:
"For one thousand years following the destruction of the Library of Alexandria, Ptolemy's (not to be confused with the Egyptian Ptolemies) model of an Earth-centred universe with planets moving in perfect circular orbits was accepted as absolute truth."
This is wrong. Ptolemy had the planet's orbits following a complicated sytsem of epicycles - see Deferent and epicycle page for details. Neither Ptolemy, other scientists, or the Church even!, believed in orbits of perfect circles around the Earth. I've modified this and added links to the deferent and epicycle page which explains Ptolemy's system in a little more detail Adrian Baker 10:12, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Too much early physics
I am not a phycisist. I am only part of the physis in Greek, or part of the nature in english. As you pointout, we talking about History of physics and physical theory. I will use the ability of the humans to speak, i.e. the language, the words, to proove that the prehistoric humans had advanced knowledges of physics. It is prooved( after the discovery of Greek letters, in the north Greece, dated 13 thousand years before present) that the Greek language is very old, going back too deep in prehistory. Fortunately, the ancient Greeks had the hapit to write. The words ,acting as vihacle, bring to ourdays the knowledges of the ancient people about the sciences and generally about their life. The word MATTER in Greek is ΥΛΗ (YLEY ) . According to the Greek etymology the word mean : the gazes of the chaos ,after concentration, are forming the different bodies of the universe .Physis (nature) is a Greek word and it mean: the rebirth of what is correct. Other words proove other scientific knowlwdges. First off, most physicists would agree that there was no physics before Galileo, yet there are countless pages about early philosophers and astronomers. For example, there is a passage that talks about how Hindu philosophers thought up atomic theory before the 6th century? One can ask the question, "what happens if I cut this in half a lot", but it isn't atomic theory (cite to argue this point) and isn't even argued fully.
This isn't the history of astronomy, mathematics or philosophy, it is the history of physics, so I think it should talk more about physical theory and experiment. All of this stuff about "early physics" seems like bad history because they use words like "atoms" and "energy" which people didn't fully understand until the early 1900s, so how could they understand them back then? There are all of these names and theories I have never heard of in my life, and I do physics.
Somebody needs to either make a strong case about why there is more stone-age Indian physics than 20th century physics, or else I am going to move for a huge clean-up of this article (delete a lot of early sections, or move them somewhere not here)
- I disagree. It is important to understand older physics even though one can argue that it is not so much physics as metaphysics. However what was once conceived to be metaphysics is now considered physics and so this early physics is still important to know about. But it could be stated in this article that it is debated wheter it is considered physics. --83.226.131.224 18:57, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
[edit] spacetime "single entity"
In 1905, Einstein formulated the theory of special relativity, unifying space and time into a single entity, spacetime. : Not so! that concept is from Minkowski, a few years later. Let's hope this article isn't about the fables of physics... Harald88 19:59, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Please add references
I am not an expert on physics, but it is a subject that interests me. One of the values of wikipedia is that it allows me to find and read original sources. I would especially like to read about the experiment in the 21st century, but no link was provided. RonCram 23:53, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Feynman quote
The Feyman quote of "Outside the nucleus, we seem to know it all" has been removed as "possibly offensive". Why offensive? Yes there are many unknowns, but offensive?? Also, isn't it normally the case that people discuss changes before diving in? Adrian Baker 11:18, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
[edit] 21st century
I've deleted the section on the 21st century since the only content was the mention of an experiment purporting to measure the speed of gravity. (While the experiment may or may not be valid, the propagation of gravity waves at the speed of light is a widely accepted prediction of general relativity, and its confirmation could hardly be more significant than, say, the discovery of neutrino mass.) Perhaps we've entered the 21st century too recently to fairly document its history of physics. Gnixon 06:06, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Aristarchus
I will remove the part were it is stated that Aristarchus thought the stars were suns with orbiting planets. This is because acording to Archimedes this is not a part of his hypothesis. However it would be a consequence of Aristarchus theories I have seen no source this hypothesis. Therefore I remove it but if someone can find a source they can offcourse re-add it.
- After consideration I suggest the whole paragraph of Aristarchus to be re-written as if you change the hypothesis of Aristarchus the passage of him loses its orginal meaning and must therefore be re-written.--Redslap 19:21, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
[edit] what did Hubble claim?
"In 1929, Edwin Hubble published his discovery that the speed at which galaxies recede positively correlates with their distance."
It is well known that Hubble did not accept that claim; thus it seems unlikely to me that he claimed it himself. Can anyone provide a quote? Harald88 20:10, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
- OK I found a link to his original paper [1]:
'a correlation between apparent radial velocities and distance'
as well as a commentary with further citation about this matter [2]:
'In a letter by Hubble to the Dutch cosmologist Willem De Sitter in 1931, he stated his concerns about these velocities by saying "... we use the term 'apparent velocities' in order to emphasize the empirical feature of the correlation. The interpretation, we feel, should be left to you and the very few others who are competent to discuss the matter with authority.'
Thus I'll simply add "apparent" to the above line, then it's OK. Harald88 19:15, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] The review of Physics continues at Talk:Physics/wip
Some time ago a group of editors set up a "work in progress" page (at Talk:Physics/wip) to hammer out a consensus for the Physics article, which for too long had been in an unstable state. Discussion of the lead for the article has taken a great deal of time and thousands of words. The definitional and philosophical foundations seem to cause most headaches; but progress has been made. Why not review some of the proposals for the lead material that people are putting forward, or put forward your own, or simply join the discussion? The more contributors the better, for a consensus. – Noetica 01:55, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
Update: Concrete proposals have now been put forward, arising from recent discussion aimed at producing a stable and consensual lead section for the Physics article. We have set up a straw poll, for comments on the proposals. Why not drop in at Talk:Physics/wip, and have your say? The more the better! – Noetica 22:35, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
