1,721,030 research outputs found
The Reception of Miller’s Ether-Drift Experiments in the USA: The History of a Controversy in Relativity Revolution
No full textThis paper analyses documents from several US archives in order to examine the controversy that raged within the US scientific community over Dayton C. Miller's ether-drift experiments. In 1925, Miller announced that his repetitions of the famous Michelson-Morley experiment had shown a slight but positive result: an ether-drift of about 10 kilometres per second. Miller's discovery triggered a long debate in the US scientific community about the validity of Einstein's relativity theories. Between 1926 and 1930 some researchers repeated the Michelson-Morley experiment, but no one found the same effect as Miller had. The inability to confirm Miller's result, paired with the fact that no other ether theory existed that could compete with special relativity theory, made his result an enigmatic one. It thus remained of little interest to the scientific community until 1954, when Robert S. Shankland and three colleagues reanalysed the data and proposed that Miller's periodic fringe shift could be attributed to temperature effects. Whereas most of the scientific community readily accepted this explanation as the conclusion of the matter, some contemporary anti-relativists have contested Shankland's methodology up to now. The historical accounts of Miller's experiments provide contradictory reports of the reaction of the US scientific community and do not analyse the mechanisms of the controversy. I will address this shortcoming with an examination of private correspondence of several actors involved in these experiments between 1921 and 1955. A complex interconnection of epistemic elements, sociological factors, and personal interests played a fundamental role in the closure of this experimental controversy in the early 1930s, as well as in the reception of Shankland's reanalysis in the 1950s
Hunting for the Luminiferous Ether: The Revival of the Michelson-Morley Experiment in the 1920s
No full text‘Dirty work’, but someone has to do it : Howard P. Robertson and the refereeing practices of ‘Physical Review’ in the 1930s
Full text linkIn the 1930s the mathematical physicist Howard P. Robertson was the main referee of the
journal Physical Review for papers concerning general relativity and related subjects. The
rich correspondence between Robertson and the editors of the journal enables a historical
investigation of the refereeing process of Physical Review at the time that it was
becoming one of the most influential physics periodicals in the world. By focusing on this
case study, the paper investigates two complementary aspects of the evolution of the
refereeing process: first, the historical evolution of the refereeing practices in connection
with broader contextual changes, and second, the attempts to define the activity of the
referee, including the epistemic virtues required and the journal’s functions according to
the participants’ categories. By exploring the tension between Robertson’s idealized
picture about how the referee should behave and the desire to promote his intellectual
agenda, I show that the evaluation criteria that Robertson employed were contextually
dependent and I argue that, in the 1930s, through his reports the referee had an enormous
power in defining what direction future research should take
Anti-relativity in action : the scientific activity of Herbert E. Ives between 1937 and 1953
No full textBetween 1937 and 1953 the industrial physicist Herbert E. Ives pursued a research project with the aim of challenging the acceptance of relativity theories, becoming the most important American opponent of Einstein of the period. During his anti-relativistic activity Ives also performed the famous Ives-Stilwell experiment. Usually interpreted as the first direct confirmation of the time dilation formula of special relativity theory, Ives regarded the experiment as a proof of what he called the Larmor-Lorentz theory. Ives’s heterodox views about relativity were mainly ignored by the scientific community during his lifetime. After his death, however, his criticisms of what the majority of physicists took for granted helped to spark the late 1950s philosophical discussions around the conventional stipulation of distant simultaneity in special relativity theory.
Ives’s anti-relativistic beliefs and actions allow an analysis of the heterodox efforts of an accredited member of the scientific community and the subsequent process of his professional marginalization in a specific historical and scientific context. This paper has three aims: first, to uncover the epistemic roots of Ives’s opposition to relativity; second, to analyse Ives’s rhetorical strategies and the reasons why he failed to persuade his peers; and, lastly, to draw distinctions between the public network of allies Ives built in scientific publications and the hidden network of allies present in his correspondence. It will become clear that the hardening of Ives’s tone against relativity and Einstein depended on the progressive marginalization and loss of recognized socio-professional identity due to Ives’s unorthodox ideas about relativity. Ives’s case is illuminating for several historical, philosophical and sociological perspectives concerning the complex mechanisms through which the margins interact with the mainstream of science, both in the production of certified knowledge and in the contextually contingent re-definition and re-configuration of the boundaries of acceptable scientific discourse
Building the general relativity and gravitation community during the Cold War
No full textThis monograph presents a new perspective on the history of general relativity. It outlines the attempts to establish an institutional framework for the promotion of the field during the Cold War. Readers will learn the difficulties that key figures experienced and overcame during this period of global conflict. The author analyzes the subtle interconnections between scientific and political factors. He shows how politics shaped the evolution of general relativity, even though it is a field with no military applications. He also details how different scientists held quite different views about what “political” meant in their efforts to pursue international cooperation. The narrative examines the specific epistemic features of general relativity that helped create the first official, international scientific society. It answers: Why did relativity bring about this unique result? Was it simply the product of specific actions of particular actors having an illuminated view of international relations in the specific context of the Cold War? Or, was there something in the nature of the field that inspired the actors to pioneer new ways of international cooperation? The book will be of interest to historians of modern science, historians of international relations, and historians of institutions. It will also appeal to physicists and interested general readers
The Multiple Lives of the General Relativity Community, 1955–1974
No full textThe history of general relativity presents intriguing challenges for historians and philosophers of science. Its origins and receptions have figured prominently in debates about conceptual transformations, the dynamics of theory change, relationships between theory and experiment and, of course, physical and philosophical notions of space and time
'The Renaissance of physics’ : Karl K. Darrow (1891–1982) and the dissemination of quantum theory at the Bell Telephone Laboratories
No full textKarl K. Darrow was a central actor in the reception of quantum theory in the Bell Telephone Laboratories. He was the first industrial physicist to dedicate his entire working time to the dissemination of novel concepts and theoretical tools by means of long review papers. The present paper analyzes the evolution of Darrow’s narratives of quantum theory and shows that Darrow’s reviews aimed at substantiating the view that physics was an evolutionary process. The paper argues that this view was connected to Darrow’s peculiar activity at the Bell Labs as well as to the contemporaneous attempts of leading American scientists to build an ideology of national science
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