Reaktionen auf naturwissenschaftliche Konzepte und Ideen in anderen Wissenschaften des 19. Jahrhunderts

Symmetries in Physics (1600-1980) 1st International Meeting on the History of Scientific Ideas, 20.-26. September 1983, Sant Feliu de Guíxols, Spanien.

Das Problem der “entscheidenden Experimente”

In this historical essay an attempt is made to discuss the problem of decisive experiments both from the point of view of History of Science and of Philosophy of Science. The first part deals with Francis Bacon's idea of instantiae crucis and with the use of the term experimentum crucis mainly in optics. With respect to the experimental confirmation of Maxwell's electrodynamics the Duhem-Quine Thesis is discussed. Duhem had argued that not a single hypothesis but only a complete theory is examined by experiment. So a single experiment neither can prove nor can disprove a single hypothesis. With regard to Bucherer's and Neumann's data concerning the velocity-dependence of the electron's mass…

Operative Gesichtspunkte bei der Diskussion des Weberschen Gesetzes

The analysis of structures of argumentation in historical controversies is considered to be a basic contribution to the dynamics of theories. In this paper attention is drawn to the occurence of operational arguments in the history of physics. This is to be discussed especially in respect to the nineteenth-century debates on the consistency of Wilhelm Weber's electrodynamic law with the principle of conservation of energy.

Verdrängte Wissenschaften: XVIII. Symposium der Gesellschaft für Wissenschaftsgeschichte 15.-17. Mai 1980 in Marburg

Prognostische Elemente in physikalischen Theorien des 19. Jahrhunderts