| Themes > Science > Physics > About Physics, Generalities > A Brief History and Philosophy of Physics > Introduction |
This brief history and philosophy of physics has been written to give physics students some appreciation of where their discipline has come from, and of the philosophical principles underpinning it. It is hoped that this will provide students with a sense of physics as a living, evolving discipline, and of their place in its evolution. Physics, indeed all of science, is not a static agglomeration of proven facts and inviolable theories. While there are many theories which are so well tried that they are generally accepted as being correct, all scientific theories are still open to attack from some new, reproducible experiment which disagrees with them. The history below bears this out. Furthermore, while science per se may be value-less, neither good or bad, the teaching or application of science always has values attached. If it is taught by a scientist without any mention of the need to use the learning responsibly, then students may assume that scientists need not be concerned about the application of science. If this happens, then the scientist ultimately abdicates to the politician or manufacturer the decision on the use of her or his own work, even though it is unlikely that either the politician or manufacturer will understand as well as the scientist the effects of its use. By this, I am not suggesting that scientists are the only ones qualified to decide on the application of science; scientists can also be blind to the potential in what they do. It is hoped that this paper will contribute to the ability of students to ask the necessary questions regarding the science they and others participate in, both now and throughout their lives. This summary is designed to outline the general development of the main branches of physics as we know them today. It is presented here as occurring in a fairly linear fashion, and discusses only the principal figures in each area. However, it must always be remembered that there were a great many more people working on these problems than mentioned here, with many of them being unaware of the work of the others. As a result, many of these areas progressed in a more-or-less "random walk" between theory and experiment until about the last two hundred years, when improved communications made it much easier to keep up to date with developments world-wide. Given the fact that half the world's population is female, there is a notable absence of women in this history. This is largely because women have been systematically excluded from science over the centuries until very recently, with few exceptions. Even when women did make major contributions as part of a larger team in relatively recent times, as was the case of the women "computers" in astronomy at Harvard College Observatory in the late 1800s, usually only the male team leader gained recognition [Rossiter]. One can only mourn the loss to the discipline from the exclusion of other Marie Curies, and work towards encouraging the participation of many more women in the future. |
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