Course Description
Introduction to the history of modern physics and its underlying philosophy for both science and non-science majors. Basic concepts of classical physics, relativity, and quantum mechanics are explained through their history, which combines intellectual, biographical, and cultural approaches. Shows how philosophical ideas shaped the development of science and how the latter, in turn, changed human views of the world.
Additional Requirements for Graduate Students:
Graduate students will be assigned extensive additional readings in the current research in the field and will meet weekly with the instructor outside of class for a discussion section. They will be required to write extra papers demonstrating their research and interpretive skills, as appropriate at the graduate level.
Athena Title
HIST MODERN PHYSICS
Semester Course Offered
Offered every year.
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
This course helps bridge the gap between sciences and the humanities. Students who don't study the sciences will gain an understanding of what scientists do as well as an introduction to the basic idea of modern physical sciences. Students who study science will get a historical understanding of their field, which is lacking in most modern courses and textbooks on science. A principal objective of the course is to teach students to think critically for themselves about the relationships between the past and the present, to learn to ask questions of the past that enable them to understand the present and mold the future, and to become attuned to both the limitations and possibilities of change. The course seeks to acquaint students with the ways in which past societies and peoples have defined the relationships between community and individual needs and goals, and between ethical norms and decision-making. In general students will be expected to: 1. read a wide range of primary and secondary sources critically. 2. polish skills in critical thinking, including the ability to recognize the difference between opinion and evidence, and the ability to evaluate--and support or refute--arguments effectively. 3. write stylistically appropriate and mature papers and essays using processes that include discovering ideas and evidence, organizing that material, and revising, editing, and polishing the finished papers.
Topical Outline
1. Aristotelian Physics 2. The Copernican Revolution 3. Descarte and the Mechanical Philosophy 4. Newtonian System of the World 5. Enlightenment Physics 6. Transformations of the Forces of Nature 7. Faraday, Maxwell, and the Field Concept 8. Heat, Thermodynamics and Atomism 9. Einstein's Relativity and its Discontents 10. Quantum and the Bohr Atom 11. Quantum Mechanics: Uncertainty and Complementarity 12. Chain Reactions 13. Universe, to the extent we know it 14. Physics of Complexity Suggested Readings: Koyre, Alexandre. From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe (1957) Jacob and Dobbs, Newton and the Culture of Newtonianism (Humanity Books, 1995) Sutton, Science for a Polite Society: Gender Culture and the Demonstration of Enlightenment (Westview Press 1995) Hoffman, Banesh, Einstein: Crator and Rebel (1972) Cline, Men who made a new Physics: Physicists and the Quantum Theory (Chicago 1987)