Technological Origins of the Einsteinian Revolution

Establishing Objective Causes in Medicine Donald Gillies (UCL), Sergio Caprara (Sapienza University of Rome), Donald Gillies

Sapienza University of Rome

Dipartimento di Filosofia     

Dipartimento di Fisica

Dottorato in Filosofia e Storia della Filosofia

Villa Mirafiori - Via Carlo Fea, 2

Thursday 24 October 2013, 11:30 – 13:30

Room II

Prof. Donald Gillies

University College London

Commentator: Prof. Sergio Caprara

(Physics - Sapienza Università di Roma)

Science and Philosophy

Technological Origins of the Einsteinian Revolution

Description

Donald Gillies examines the issue of scientific revolutions and offers two patterns for it. In the ‘tech first’ model, advances in technology come first, enabling new observations and experiments, which result in discoveries that give rise to scientific revolutions. In the ‘tech last’ model, urgent practical hard-to-solve problems stimulate solutions by changing the paradigm and advances in tech occur as a consequence of scientific revolutions.

In his paper Gillies discusses one of the most profoundly impactful example of ‘tech first revolutions’: the Einsteinian revolution, which began around 1905 and was one of the most remarkable in the history of physics. It replaced Newtonian mechanics, which had been accepted as completely correct for nearly 200 years, by the Special and General Theories of Relativity. It also eliminated the ether, which had dominated physics throughout the 19th century. This paper poses the question of why this momentous scientific revolution began. The suggested answer is in terms of the remarkable series of discoveries and inventions which occurred in the preceding decade (1895-1904), and which were themselves the result of technological developments in instrumentation. The paper gives a survey of these inventions and discoveries, which include: X-rays, radioactivity (radium and alpha, beta, and gamma rays), the electron, wireless transmissions across the Atlantic, and the patenting of the first thermionic valve. An attempt is then made to show that it was these developments, which gave rise to special relativity.                            

Program

11:30 – 12:20 D. Gillies (UCL), Technological Origins of the Einsteinian Revolution

12:20 – 12:40 S. Caprara (Physics - Sapienza Università di Roma), Comment

12:40 – 13:30 Discussion

Organization and info: Emiliano Ippoliti - [email protected]