Readings in the History of Science

We’ll continue in Nancy Cartwright’s ‘How the laws of physics lie’ in our
February 18 meeting. We’re currently working on ‘The simulacrum account of explanation’. We’ll finish this essay and go on to discuss the last essay in the book, ‘How the measurement problem is an artifact of the mathematics’. The last essay is a long one and we won’t finish it in the Feb 18 session.
The book can be downloaded at https:/joelvelasco.net/teaching/120/cartwright-How_the_Laws_of_Physics_Lie.pdf You could also send a note to kachelme@gmail.com with ‘send Cartwright book’ in the subject line.
After these sojourns into realism we will take up where we left off in the 18th century. This will include concepts of force and nascent ideas of field in the 18th and 19th century, mathematical developments, and thermodynamics.

Readings will include:
Jan Rychlewski, ‘The origins of Newton’s mechanics. mass, force, and gravity’
Sandro Caparrini and Craig Fraser, ‘Mechanics in the Eighteenth Century’
Helmut Pulte, ‘Jacobi’s Criticism of Lagrange: The Changing Role of Mathematics in the Foundations of Classical Mechanics’
Ivor Grattan-Guiness ‘The Varieties of Mechanics by 1800’
Niccolò Guicciardini, ‘Newton's Mathematical Legacy in the Eighteenth Century

This group is more historical and less philosophical (we can even be anti-philosophical at times). Much of the ground we’ll be covering will be in the spirit of Thomas Kuhn. We will be working our way into the 20th century, starting from the 17th century. Enroute they will be plenty of opportunity to look at larger perennial issues such as cause, law, mechanism, and experiment. A previous incarnation of the group made it as far as considering the work of Ernst Mach. In this incarnation we intend to make it further into the quantum world. Neither of us is an expert in the history of science. We come at this with a lot of curiosity and a desire to avoid platitudes, and bring to the group our complementary perspectives from the social and physical sciences.