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)
- 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)
- 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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
Sources
A great list of sources can be found at [3]. —— Eagle 101 (Need help?) 22:08, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
Summarize for Physics
The main Physics article currently has a long section devoted to History of Physics. Much of the material there is at a level of detail that would be better suited to this article. It would be a great service to both Physics and History of Physics if someone would incorporate here some of the good material in Physics, then replace its History section with a concise summary of this article. Gnixon 18:01, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
Incorrect information
"It was only after Newton published his Principia that Descartes was compelled to rethink his understanding of the Laws of Motion"
This sentence is incorrect: Descartes died long before Newton had published his Principia.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 170.35.224.64 (talk • contribs) 20:14, 2 September 2007
- Well-spotted. I've deleted that sentence. Cardamon 05:34, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
more on the history of physics
I think some of the topics on early physics need to be removed. I mean this is about the science of physics, not speculative philosophy, which is pretty much all of the indian contributions to physics. Egyption contributions to physics is a a sub-title, yet it has on sentence written, which is about astronomy, and there is of course islamic contributions. I have had to edit so much of the islamic contributions, becuase studying science myself in university, well some of the content is stretched way beyond imagination, foreshadowing scientific laws?????, does that even sound right. At one point some claimed that Ibn Bajja, "discovered" there was a reaction for every action, am sorry but how does someone go about discovering that, its something that is implied no one can actually discover it, and if they did, how did they do it exactly. Someone has written down that Hibat Allah Abu'l-Barakat al-Baghdaadi described acceleration as the rate of change of velocity, am sorry but how is that a discovery in the first place, all that is just merely stating what the definition of acceleration is, it cant be discovered since the very fact that the word exists at all is a testement that it has been known all along. a third and massive error is that Ja'far Muhammad ibn Mūsā ibn Shākir discovered that there was a a force of attraction of between heavinly bodies. Hmmm how exactly did he make that discovery, he didnt know Newton's law of gravitation, and there is no way he had any instruments to somehow measure this supposed force of attraction. If it wasnt done scientifically then it must be philosophy, and as i have stated before this article on physics should be about the concrete discovery of scientific facts not philosophy. Its not that philosophy should play no role on this section, but spending that much space to talk about philisophical concepts is pointless on an artcile which needs to focus on facts. If someone does start changing some of the way these sections are written its gonna be time for deletion sooooo. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.36.181.171 (talk) 05:54, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
recent changes
i ve decided that the best way to solve the problem with some of the early history of physics. Because most of what is written for indian contribution in philosophy, in particular atomic philosophy, i ve decided to move large sections of it to atomic theory page, for atomic philosophy. It just not appropriate to put all these details about atomic theory in the hisotry of physics, since its philosophy, not to mention that its a bit decieving to be writting about atomic concept and energy, since now one in that era had the faintist clue what atom, ligh and energy really were. as far as the egyptian contributions i just got rid of it since there isnt anything about physics their and there isnt even a link to something about ancient egyptian contributions to science, if they even exist. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tomasz Prochownik (talk • contribs) 05:01, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
what am planning
Am planning on fusing the section of physics in the early cultures into one coherent piece rather then breaking it up pointlessly into sections, plus in doing so am giving the pre-warnging that certain section will most difenetly not be included in the revised version. This is purely since there has already been many complaints that there is was to much early physics, which is essentially true since, almost none of what is listed in the early cultures is physics but mere astronomy. Pretty much the only thing resembling physics in early cutltures woould be greek theories for center of gravity, archimides principle, and aristotle's ideas of force, yet for some reason those are barely mentiond or not at all. am also going to be fusing the middle ages into one section as well, siince esentially aside from early forms of experimentation and the discovery of law of refration, there isnt much to write about, and the section about islamic mechaincs is going for a major overhaul, especially on the ideas of gravity since they are almost exclusively speculative in nature, even though they have been presented as being scientific discoveries. Am open to all suggestions, questions, or help, please help!!!!!!!!!!lol. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tomasz Prochownik (talk • contribs) 08:21, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
no editorialization
"The Book of Optics has been ranked alongside Isaac Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica as one of the most influential books in the history of physics,[10] for initiating a scientific revolution in optics[11] and visual perception.[12"
This sentnce has been removed for several reasons. The first being that UNESCO is not an authority on science, and the book of optics does even come close to being one of the most important books in physics, that title is reserved Newtons, Maxwell and others. Lets be blunt here Ibn al-Haytham isnt considered a top physicts even it was a list out of 500, so there is no way he could have written a book thats one of the most important. Secondly, what is considered important is purely relative, so this sentnce is purely expressing and opinion and using some fact to back it up. Thridly, there isnt any point of editorializing here, its like someone wrtiing by Newton's, Einstien, Maxwell etc that there their considered the greatest physicts of all time, it doesnt add any real substance to an article. Lastly, a revolution in optics, really well in order for it to be revoltuion it would have to totally alter previous assumptions and most importantly be followed by a series of equally if not greater findings based upon early ones, while in reality optics remains doormant for another 6 centuries, and one discovery doesnt consistute a revolution. Clearly someone is just putting their own 2 cents in this piece —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.36.181.171 (talk) 09:19, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
recent change
can someone explain to me this calim, " Al-Khazini was also one of the first to clearly differentiate between force, mass, and weight". How can one differentiate between mass and weight if they arent aware of newtons's law of universal gravitation, since that is the only way figuring out that gravity is force that produces a magnitude. Unless this is somehow elaborated on rather then just being thrown in, it will be removed. also oddly someone put force, but force does not necessarily have to be related to mass or weight. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.36.181.171 (talk) 05:17, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
combination of ancient physics
i have begun the process of the fusing all the ancient history about physics into one section rather then just breaking it up into meaningless categories. Certain sections were removed simply because they have nothing to that actually pertains to physics. for example sectgions dealing with math have been removed since math is not the same as physics, its employed in physics, but it is definately not the same, its well not even science sooo, there is no point of making references to that. There is also alot of info. about ancient work on astronomy, which well was largley based on obsservation with no actual concepts or laws being discovered, so once again it makes no sense to clutter this page with well lets be blunt trivial work in astronomy. All references to heliocentrism in india are gone simply since it has absolutely nothing to do with physics, not to mention the sources are totally unreliable, and thats been up for a while. Secondly, i think people need to take a minute to remeber that Copernicus's heliocentyric model and any other's that some alledge existed were not in any way accurate descriptions of celestial bodies, all he was mathematically show that it is possible for the earth to circle the sun, his description of why and how those planets revolved around the sun was aboslutely incorrect, it was kepler who provided the first correct laws on planetary motion. Anyways the my next editing will consist of merging the middle ages section. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tomasz Prochownik (talk • contribs) 06:04, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
law of interia:discovery
i have changed the wording of the discovery of the law of inertia being made alhazan. I have yet to see any evidence that he used any experimentation to prove the law of inertia, which Galileo did. Galileo used a series of experiment with objects sliding down inclined planes), realized that the analysis of Aristotle was incorrect because it failed to account properly for a hidden force: the frictional force between the surface and the object. The firctional force is the key discovery in the law of inertia. Therefore without experimentation or any concpets around inertia any early attempts at the law of inertia are philisophical in nature and do not constitute a scientific discovery, but mear speculation, although a very correct guess at it. If there is evidence to the contrary, please provide the proof. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tomasz Prochownik (talk • contribs) 02:40, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
Radical Revisions
I'm hesitant to interfere in this page, but I am a professional historian who works for the American Institute of Physics' Center for History of Physics, and this article is nearly unreadable. It is basically an exercise in listing as many discoveries and claims to precedence as the page will hold in an effort to assign credit. I believe it would be more coherent if the article abandoned the effort to assign credit for discoveries of physical principles, and instead made some effort a) to highlight and follow main traditions rather than trying to list all the most important discoveries; and b) to define physics in some historically defensible way, while redirecting "precedents" (such as Archimedes, Copernicus, al-Haytham, etc...) to more appropriate articles. This is not in any way to denigrate their achievements as "not physics", but rather to place them within traditions that they would have recognized, rather than trying to force them into the more modern category of "physics".
All this would require really radical revisions; basically a do-over on the whole article. I would be glad to write a first draft, but I don't want to imperiously wipe out other peoples' work, and I am not really willing to get into disputes over whether "physics" is some category of knowledge that remains coherent over all time. Therefore, I propose the following article introduction, and if there are no objections to its general tenor (I've tried to keep the professional jargon to a minimum), I would like to refurbish the article later this summer.
I totally agree with your approach herem couldn't have put it better myself. There is alot of fake history on wikipedia about discoveries being made by indivduals in the past, i.e. the law of inertia. This is largely becuase many of the writers on this page seem to think that a mere sentence that is somewhat correct constitues a discovery when it clearly does not, and of course physics did not emerge as a science until the 17th century.Tomasz Prochownik (talk) 08:22, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
This article concerns the development of the modern discipline of physics out of traditions established primarily by 17th-century natural philosophers Galileo Galilei, René Descartes, and Isaac Newton. Prior to their work, “physics” cannot be said to have existed in the way it is currently understood. For recognizable precedents to the modern physics discipline, see articles in the History of Astronomy, the History of Geometry, and the History of Philosophy (see especially Aristotle’s Physics and Metaphysics, and Inertia). For a broader perspective on these precedents, see the History of Science in Classical Antiquity and the History of Science in the Middle Ages. For a brief description of these precedents, see the introduction to this article.
Introduction to the History of Physics
Physics concerns the study of force and movement. Elements of contemporary physics are recognizable in the work of scholars living in many parts of the Earth through recorded history. For example, the work of the Ancient scholar and geometer Archimedes clearly contains concepts that are now taught as physics. However, in the pre-modern world, “physics” referred to a more philosophical field of inquiry, concerned with uncovering the underlying explanatory “causes” of motion, while descriptive fields such as astronomy and optics were considered more closely related to the technical practice of geometry.
Prior to the work and advocacy of Galileo Galilei and his supporters, explanation was a high philosophical enterprise, where description and quantitative prediction were considered lower technical arts. In this earlier period, philosophers considered the earth to be at the center of the universe, with the moon circling just above, and the sun, planets, and stars circling beyond. They explained the “physics” of the geometrically predictable motions that occurred above the moon (in the “superlunary” region) in terms of the perfection inherent to that region. However, the actual task of prediction was considered to be the technical art of the astronomers.
Below the moon (in the “sublunary” region), geometric analysis of motion and force was limited to artificially constrained situations, as in optics or architecture. Being artificial, geometrically analyzable sublunary motion was not considered of fundamental philosophical importance, because philosophy pertained only to the natural and eternal. Meanwhile, philosophers held that natural sublunary motions (while generally occurring in a straight line) were irregular, and thus their geometrical description was also not pertinent to philosophy. According to them, the “physics” of sublunary substances should be analyzed in terms of the fundamental natural tendencies of different kinds of substances. For instance, philosophical physics held that humans, being thinking animals, tended to think. Similarly, rocks, being earthy substances, tended to drop toward the earth.
Galileo Galilei, a mathematician and philosopher, argued that motion was universally analyzable through geometry and mathematics, regardless of whether it occurred above or below the moon, and of whether it was natural or artificial. He urged that this analytical knowledge should be regarded as capable of subverting the authority of the knowledge established in Classical and Scholastic philosophy. Continuing in the Galilean tradition of mathematical and geometric analysis, the natural philosopher René Descartes conceptually unified motion by supposing that all physical events could be analyzed in terms of the movement of a plenum of unchanging “corpuscles”. Eschewing the requirement that all mathematical analysis requires a firm ontological foundation (such as in the motion of Descartes’ corpuscles), Isaac Newton formulated a means of mathematical analysis of motion in accordance with his three laws of motion and his law of gravitation.
Following Newton, the modern discipline of physics developed out of the twin traditions of experiment, on the one hand, and mathematical analysis according to fundamental principles, on the other. These twin traditions have been constantly bridged and abetted through the development of (frequently controversial) metaphysical concepts, such as theories of the nature of electricity, the idea of the atom, and the nature of gravity. Occasionally, analysis according to these metaphysical concepts has proven so robust that they have been fully accepted as descriptions of fundamentally real entities, providing physics with a reputation as a foundational science. This article will follow the major trends in the history of the experimental and analytical traditions, as well as the theorization and establishment of some major fundamental entities.
Will Thomas (talk) 19:35, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
Overhaul made on 8/1; which was detected as vandalism by ClueBot. I have reported the false positive. New citations and images to be added as soon as opportunity permits. The new version has a more coherent organization, and attempt to stick to the broad picture. Pre-1600 material was deleted. I welcome the content, but argue that it should be divided between history of philosophy, history of science, and history of optics/astronomy/mechanics/geometry articles. A united and recognizable physics discipline did not emerge until the 17th century. Further discussion is welcome. Will Thomas (talk) 01:17, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
Until the references, images, and whatever's missing are added, I'm reverting the article to what it was. Please work on drafts in your sandbox. Also, before suppressing such a large amount of information, please try to gauge what the feeling about the deletion is first. Headbomb {ταλκ – WP Physics: PotW} 05:39, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
The Principia's empirical predictions were not well confirmed
The article currently claims
"In 1687, Newton published the Principia, detailing two comprehensive and successful physical theories: Newton's laws of motion, from which arise classical mechanics; and Newton's law of universal gravitation, which describes the fundamental force of gravity. Both theories agreed well with experiment.[citation needed]"
But this is false positivist hagiography, and I suspect no reliable source will be found to justify this claim, as none has been to date in response to its citation flag.
I propose it be replaced by something of the following ilk in line with more fallibilist and critical modern scholarship.
'But on modern critical evaluations of the empirical record of the Principia at the time,[ref>See, for example, Bernard Cohen's 1999 Guide to Newton's Principia, George Smith's The methodology of the Principia in the 2002 The Cambridge Companion to Newton, Wilson's 1989 The Newtonian achievement in astronomy in Taton & Wilson 1989, and Newton and celestial mechanics in the 2002 The Cambridge Companion to Newton, and Westfall's 1973 Newton and the Fudge-Factor</ref> it seems most or even all of the novel empirical predictions and explanations in celestial mechanics it explicitly made were either refuted [ref>E.G. high-tide times, the lunar orbit. See Wilson's 1989 The Newtonian achievement in astronomy in Taton & Wilson 1989, and Newton and celestial mechanics in the 2002 The Cambridge Companion to Newton</ref>or unconfirmed[ref>e.g.the mutual perturbation of Jupiter and Saturn at their conjunction, the moving aphelia of Mars, Earth, Venus and Mercury.</ref>at the time, even by its 1727 third edition, or else in effect forged by concocting parameters just to fit the known facts[ref> E.G. the precession of the equinoxes, the lunar mass. See Westfall's 1973 Newton and the Fudge -Factor.</ref>It was some time afterwards before any novel empirical predictions or explanations by theoretical systems based on its three laws of motion and law of gravity achieved any significant empirical success after their further development by French scientists, most famously in the successfully predicted return of Halley's comet in 1759,[ref>In November 1758 its return to its perihelion was publicly predicted by Clairaut and his assistants by just over 1 month late (15 April) of its perihelion on 13 March on the basis of a dynamical perturbational analysis, whereas the 1713 second edition of the Principia had predicted its return in 1757, and then only on the basis of a kinematical curve-fitting identity of its visible orbit with comets of 1682 and 1607</ref>after which the French Academy of Science withdrew its prize for the refutation of the Newtonian theory. But on the other hand, just as all scientific theories always have many empirical anomalies or counterexamples, as pointed out by fallibilist philosophers of science such as Feyerabend, Kuhn, Lakatos and Laudan, so did the Newtonian system. The most famous of these was Mercury's anomalous perihelion, whose eventual explanation by Einstein's General Theory of Relativity refuted Newton's universal law of gravity.'
--Logicus (talk) 14:30, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
- I don't like this proposed addition. It is too long, it reads like an extended attack, and it inappropriately drags 20th century philosophers critical of science into the section on the 17th century. Also, it kind of ignores the impossibility of predicting the exact return times of many comets using just celestial mechanics (the reaction force from outgassing affects their orbits) and the mathematical difficulty of the problem of the motion of the moon Cardamon (talk) 17:03, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
1729
Logicus's claim that most in Europe were "geoheliocentric" before 1729 seems to be untrue. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.167.246.75 (talk) 09:31, 1 August 2008 (UTC) Bradley's abberation was very difficult to reconcile with Young's wave theory of light, puzzling the 19th. century severely.