Abstract
In September of this year (1927) ten years will have passed since the death of Marian Smoluchowski.
TN: Translated from Pod Znamenem Marksizma (Under the Banner of Marxism), 1927, No. 9, pp. 144–148. The preface to a Russian translation of “On the concept of chance and on the origin of probability laws in physics”, von Smoluchowski (1918).
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
TN: English translation from Boltzmann (1995, p. 192).
- 3.
TN: Reference to Engels on Clausius—see quotation in next paragraph.
- 4.
TN: English translation from Dialectics of Nature, Engels (1988, p. 563). Engels adds “Ad absurdum!” Italics as in the original and as given by Hessen.
- 5.
BH: Sommerfeld (1917, p. 537).
- 6.
BH: On statistical and dynamical concepts related to the problem of causality in modern physics see: On the bicentenary of Isaac Newton’s death. Foreword to articles by A. Einstein and J. J. Thomson by Boris Hessen, Pod Znamenem Marksizma (Under the Banner of Marxism), 1927, 4, pp. 152–165. TN: See Chap. 4.
- 7.
TN: Here and in the following “chance” is taken as the translation of the Russian sluchainost’.
- 8.
TN: i.e. on the Deborinite philosophers by the Mechanists.
- 9.
- 10.
TN: The same quotation is used in Chap. 4, p. 56, n. 41. German original: ...alle Wahrscheinlichkeitstheorien von vornherein als ungenügend zu betrachten, welche den Zufall als “unbekannte Teilursache” auffassen. Die physikalische Wahrscheinlichkeit eines Ereignisses kann nur von den Bedingungen abhängen, welche sein Zustandekommen beeinflussen, aber nicht von dem Grade unseres Wissens! (Italics in original, p. 254).
- 11.
TN: This quotation is also used in Chap. 4, p. 46, n. 40. German original: Betrachtet man in populärer Weise den Zufall als die Negation des Gesetzmäßigen, so sind diese Widersprüche gewiß vollständig unüberbrückbar (pp. 253–4).
- 12.
TN: Plekhanov (1976). Available via https://www.marxists.org/archive/plekhanov/1898/xx/individual.html, cited 13.03.20.
- 13.
To give some indication of Hessen’s interests, note that he published a paper “The Interpretation of the Ergodic Hypothesis by the Theory of Probability”, published in Uspekhi Fizicheskikh Nauk (Advances in Physical Sciences), No. 5, 1929, pp. 600–629. We considered translating it but realised that it was an entirely technical introduction to ergodic theory in statistical mechanics as understood at that time, hardly suitable for this collection.
- 14.
- 15.
Ingarden (1999) (Containing a brief biography by Smoluchowski’s son, as well as introductions by Kac and the astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, this seems to be the only book specifically on Smoluchowski in English).
- 16.
Ibid., p. 20.
- 17.
- 18.
von Plato (1994), pp. 171–173.
- 19.
von Smoluchowski (1918, p. 262).
- 20.
Chapter 4, p. 57, n. 44.
- 21.
- 22.
- 23.
See p. 64 above.
- 24.
Bohm (1957).
References
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Hessen, B. (2021). Marian Smoluchowski (On the Tenth Anniversary of His Death). In: Talbot, C., Pattison, O. (eds) Boris Hessen: Physics and Philosophy in the Soviet Union, 1927–1931. History of Physics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70045-4_5
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