Abstract
Now that a visitor to a physics laboratory can be shown a solitary barium ion glowing like a tiny star caught in a bottle, skepticism about the existence of atoms seems as quaint and remote from our time as belief in a flat Earth. Yet less than a century ago, serious thinkers still doubted the reality of atoms.
Keywords
Italian Chemist Scientific Philosophy Amazing Feat Copernican Theory Hindu Philosopher
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Notes
- The first human to catch a direct glimpse of a single, isolated atom may have been Dr. Werner Neuhauser, in late 1979 at the University of Heidelberg in Germany. See Chapter 15, “The Impossible Observed.”Google Scholar
- Useful works on Boltzmann and Mach include: Engelbert Broda’s Ludwig Boltzmann: Man, Physicist, Philosopher (1983);Google Scholar
- John Blackmore’s Mach: His Work, Life and Influence (1972);Google Scholar
- and Cohen and Seeger (eds.), Ernst Mach: Physicist and Philosopher (1970).MATHGoogle Scholar
- Kac’s riposte to Feynman: see the review of Kac’s memoir Enigmas of Chance (1985) in Ann. Prob. 14, no. 4 (1986), p. 1147.Google Scholar
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© Birkhäuser Boston 1995