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History of Science - problems with the history of physics
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Science teaching, in schools and in universities, now often includes bits of science history - and there are some courses specifically on History of Science.
While most older fiction works like Shakespeare's are freely available to all on the internet, older science works generally have very restricted availability and can involve substantial charges. This website will seek to improve that. Much of what is now taught on the history of science, including much history of physics, includes some major errors discussed below. And the education of most scientists in science history is probably at its most limited ever today. | |||
Problems with science history.
As a separate subject History of Science tends to be chiefly concerned with people and especially with ;
1. who first produced a new science idea.
2. who helped with or helped inspire that new science idea.
3. who opposed that new science idea.
This can certainly be very interesting, but an excessive concern with people can mean that the actual science ideas are not examined closely enough and so can include major errors. And a science idea itself can also have significant actual problems from ;
1. a scientist publishes a new science idea, but then develops and amends it.
2. other scientists develop and amend that science idea.
3. others opposing that new science idea misrepresent it (unintentionally or intentionally).
4. others merging that new science idea with their own amend it or misrepresent it.
5. any new terms, or new use of existing terms, involved in a new science idea can be misunderstood.
When science was all books written and read in Latin, that had some big advantages and disadvantages for scientists in allowing publication to be international but often very limited and censored so the education of early scientists mostly involved Plato, Aristotle and Euclid. But after Newton local natural language science journals took over and scientists were soon addressing only recent journal articles in their own language and were generally poorly educated on wider science theory. Hence, Einstein was chiefly knowledgeable only on other German language physics of his time and grossly misunderstood Newton and earlier physics theory ideas - and almost all modern physicists are similarly ignorant.
Also now scientists publish their theories in ad hoc articles, encouraged by government funders and science journals wanting newsworthy briefs. But science theory write-ups need to be comparable to show where they are compatible or incompatible to identify their proof issues - in physics, 'Principia' basics compatible write-ups are needed. Of course Newton's Principia was essentially a write-up of three theories in one - Newton blackbox physics, Gilbert attraction physics and Descartes push physics - though they would be more usefull as three separate write-ups.
This website presents a lot of history of physics, trying to concentrate on theory ideas, as the final published thoughts that you may be able to read especially of four specific famous physicists - Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, Rene Descartes and William Gilbert. There are of course many others, but these four give a good range of basic theories of the universe worth considering here in an interrelated manner. And here it is the scientific ideas that are examined, ignoring whether part of Descartes optics may have come from Snell or parts of Gilbert, Newton and Einstein ideas may have come from others. Not the textbook physics history of rubbish and lies pretending smooth scientific advance, but the real history of physics of ignorant unscientific scientists limiting its advance.
Of the four sets of physics ideas examined around this website, those of Albert Einstein and Rene Descartes are somewhat less problematic in that their ideas are generaly taught reasonably accurately though often not very clearly. But the theories of both Isaac Newton and William Gilbert are often taught as differing substantially from the ideas that they published, often robbing Newton's theory of its Black Box base and robbing Gilbert's theory of its Robot Matter base. Since there is no good reason for Newton's and Gilbert's theories being so misrepresented, they are presented more correctly here.
Gilbert had formulated from experiments his 'attraction physics' involving matter responding to signals that travelled through empty space from other matter (and with no reference to god or to humans), in the 1580's when religions and governments with their scholars and philosophers backed Aristotles non-experimental 'logical divine science'. Experimental science only really began to be accepted from around 1650, when the semi-experimentalist philosopher Descartes won wide backing including often by religions and governments for his 'logical semi-divine science' with a mechanical push universe including a matter ether that filled space - and giving god and humans a separate special place.
Supporters of Descartes claimed that Gilbert's signal response physics was 'unscientific' because it required bodies to be 'animate' - but animals are animate and still obey the laws of physics, so those claiming that the animate was unscientific were being idiotic and Gilbert's physics was dismissed without being disproved. Not the only case of physicists being idiotic.
Later attempts by Newton to disprove with experiments the strongly entrenched Descartes' logic-physics, especially on its ether, were so fiercely opposed by what were then peer scientists that he had to moderate his opposition to Descartes physics and moderate his support for Gilbert physics. That was enough to allow Newton's physics to be falsely presented as being an improved-Descartes push-physics that included Descartes' ether.
To date there have been 4 basic types of theory explaining the behaviour of physical bodies, including gravity behaviour, that have had some substantial support. These have had variants, and there have been some other less well supported physics ideas also, but the 4 main theory types are characterised in the diagrams below ;
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Newton, the probably most astute of physicists ever if not always entirely correct, concluded that NO explanation fell within science proper and that either of the theory types 2 or 3 might be correct and give compatible mathematics. And comparison of the diagrams above suggests also that a post-Newton type 4 theory Einstein physics could be a mirror image of Gilbert type 2 physics.
Some of Newton's specific ideas were readily accepted, like his almost-new conclusion that terrestrial gravity and planet motion involved the same thing, but were not immediately taken as disproof of anybody. Newton's experimental disproofs of chunks of Descartes' logical physics were only fully accepted some generations on, and his main blackbox theory was never widely accepted by scientists. When there was a developed body of scientists their 'peer review' generally worked well for smaller bits of science, but often worked badly for big science ideas that required a complete rethink of established science. When Einstein arrived on the science scene later, he started with smaller science ideas and built-up slowly to his bigger ideas. He claimed to disprove 'Newton's ether theory' - when he was actually disproving Descartes again, or rather the Lorentz modification of his ether, and was really ignoring and was not disproving Newton's real physics or indeed Gilbert's. Often a majority of scientists have rejected a better theory to support a weaker theory. And if England was one of the earliest centers of emergence of experimental science from before 1600, it was also early in the bureaucraticising of science from around the 1700's that was to limit its development for hundreds of years.
Interestingly, 2005 saw an attempt in the USA to introduce a new law called "The Restore Scientific Integrity to Federal Research and Policymaking Act", requiring that science be controlled by government science agencies rather than by central government !
And 2007 saw the UK's Channel 4 TV disprove the theory being supported by most environmental scientists that
the Global Warming weather changes that Earth is getting now are NOT mainly due to man-made CO2 from burning oil, gas and coal. It certainly seems to be due to some other cause - natural or man-made ?
William Gilbert and others had strongly argued for science theory to be based on direct deduction from experience and experiment on natural phenomena only. But Kepler and Newton supported the validity of deduction from mathematics in science theory. However, Einstein's adoption of 'thought experiments' has perhaps encouraged many physicists now to confine themselves to only logical theorising, though now perhaps mostly based on manipulating equations or mathematical language ? Of course as experiments have revealed more complex natural phenomena needing more complex maths, it is maybe understandable that real physics explanation has become more problematic.
And experiments (like the Mitchelson-Morley experiment in our Albert Einstein section) are designed to demonstrate something specific, and strongly tend to being interpreted only in that regard even when they might more realistically be demonstrating something different in fact.
The biggest case of experience or experiment being misleading is of course the fact that on Earth it clearly appears that the Sun orbits the Earth every 24 hours - though we now know that it is actually the Earth revolving every 24 hours. Some of the supposedly key experiments of physics are probably open to different interpretations than those normally being assumed.
And though useful human invention began BEFORE science developed, science ideas have helped useful invention - even science ideas that were later fully disproved !
The number of people entering science professions in more recent years is much greater a hundred years ago, but in some respects the range of people entering science professions has been greatly narrowed. Hence though much good Physics has been done using relatively simple mathematics, and now a physicist will commonly have a computer or an assistant that can do more complex mathematics for them, physics exams lately have generally been designed to fail all who have difficulty with complex mathematics.
And much good Biology has been done using no art drawing, and now a biologist will commonly have a camera or an assistant that can do art drawings for them, biology exams lately have generally been designed to fail all who have difficulty with art drawing. Exams needed to enter science professions often severely limit the range of entrants and help limit the scope of the sciences concerned.
The physics time chart below for the chief physicists considered here, has bars for when they lived and in black shows when they chiefly published ;
Gilbert .... Kepler ... Galilei . Descartes . Newton .... Einstein
Of these six, only Gilbert and Newton seem to have studied all physics theories available and Newton seems unique in being able to both understand and use very different types of theory. Hence for gravity Newton used Gilbert's attraction theory but he also used particle and wave theories elsewhere - while using a blackbox theory and not committing to any one explanation theory.
Google Books - a great new growing resource
New Science theory really has to commend Google Books on becoming a great new growing resource for older and rare books - and increasingly so for early science books that are not readily available otherwise. To search them yourself go to Google, More, Books and then to Advanced Search and click FullView with an author or book name.
New Science Theory will be keeping a keen eye on Google Books for good new additions that we can offer freely to you, this often depends on good universities or others helping Google - unfortunately far too few to date. You might do some real good for this world, by helping Google Books, if you have a good older science book that they do not now have in FullView or if yours is a better copy than Google Books have.
For now, thanks to Google Books, you can download below from this site three great physics books in PDF ;
(if you need one, a good FREE PDF reader is available (from www.Adobe.com)
1. download Isaac Newton's Principia (1848 English 24.1mb - imperfect),
2. download Isaac Newton's Opticks (1730 English 16.2mb),
3. download William Gilbert's De Magnete (1600 Latin 27.6mb).
OR see our helpful book sections ;
USA science books or
UK science books
USA Einstein books or
UK Einstein books
USA Newton books or
UK Newton books
USA Descartes books or
UK Descartes books
USA Gilbert books or
UK Gilbert books
Two websites to help inform you on what physicists and astronomers are up to lately are Physics Web and Universe Today.
For imperfect free online Latin translation see here.
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