Abstract
For those readers who have questions, we end this revision with observations that might answer them. We organize them under the following headings: Theoretical Physics as an Empirical Field; The Second Physicist; The Complete Physicist, Theoretical Physics, Specialization, and Unity of Physics; Importance of University Positions for Theoretical Physics; Why German Theoretical Physics Was Successful; Theoretical Physics and the Goal of Unified Theory; and Theoretical Physics as a Field. The acknowledgment of theoretical physics as a partly autonomous field was accomplished without forfeiting the ultimate goal throughout our period of a unified structure in which theory and experiment each played an essential role and had its proper place.
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Notes
- 1.
Hermann von Helmholtz, “Gustav Magnus. In Memoriam,” in Popular Lectures on Scientific Subjects, trans. E. Atkinson (New York: Appleton, 1881), 1–25, on 16–19.
- 2.
Helmholtz to Prussian Ministry official Althoff, 18 May 1884, STPK, Darmst. Coll. F 1 a 1847.
- 3.
“Separatvotum,” 16 February 1866, STA, Marburg, Bestand 305a, 1864/66; Melde. Marburg Phil. Fac. to Curator, 12 November 1900, STA, Marburg, Bestand 310 Acc. 1975/42.
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Wilhelm Wien, “Ziele und Methoden der theoretischen Physik,” Jahrbuch der Radioaktivität und Elektronik 12 (1915): 241–59, on 241.
- 5.
Max Planck, Wissenschaftliche Selbstbiographie (Leipzig: J. A. Barth, 1948), 16.
- 6.
R. Steven Turner, “The Growth of Professorial Research in Prussia, 1818–1848–Causes and Context.” HSPS 3 (1971): 137–82, on 155–56.
- 7.
Kiel U. Philosophical Faculty to Prussian Minister of Culture Gossler, 14 December 1882, DZA, Merseburg.
- 8.
Turner, “Growth of Professorial Research in Prussia,” passim.
- 9.
John Theodore Merz, A History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century, 4 vols. (1904–1912; reprint, New York: Dover, 1965), vol. 1, 166–67.
- 10.
Hermann von Helmholtz, “On Academic Freedom in German Universities” (1877), in Popular Lectures on Scientific Subjects, 2nd ser., trans. E. Atkinson (London: Longmans, Green, 1908), 237–65, on 251.
- 11.
The general traits according to Merz, History of European Thought, vol. 1, 212–15.
- 12.
Albert Einstein, “Principles of Research,” 1918, in Ideas and Opinions (New York: Dell, 1973), 219–22, on 219–20.
- 13.
Paul Volkmann, Erkenntnistheoretische Grundzüge der Naturwissenschaften und ihre Beziehungen zum Geistesleben der Gegenwart. Allgemein wissenschaftliche Vorträge, 2nd ed. (Leipzig and Berlin: B. G. Teubner, 1910), 108.
- 14.
Wien to Sommerfeld, 11 June 1898, Sommerfeld Correspondence, Ms. Coll., DM.
- 15.
Hermann von Helmholtz, Vorlesungen über theoretische Physik, vol. 1, pt. 1, Einleitung zu den Vorlesungen über theoretische Physik, ed. A. König and C. Runge (Leipzig: J. A. Barth, 1903), 1.
- 16.
Max Planck, “Verhältnis der Theorien zueinander,” in Physik, ed. Emil Warburg (Berlin: Teubner, 1915) , 732–37, on 733–34, 737.
- 17.
Ludwig Boltzmann, “Josef Stefan. Rede gehalten bei der Enthüllung des Stefan-Denkmals am 8. Dez. 1895,” in Populäre Schriften (Leipzig: J. A. Barth, 1905), 92–103, on 94.
- 18.
Lewis Pyenson, The Young Einstein: The Advent of Relativity (Bristol and Boston: Adam Hilger, 1985), 138, 140.
- 19.
Volkmann, Erkenntnistheoretische Grundzüge, 138, 140.
- 20.
Hermann von Helmholtz, “The Aim and Progress of Physical Science,” 1869, in Popular Lectures on Scientific Subjects, trans. E. Atkinson (New York, 1873), 363–97, on 366.
- 21.
Voigt to Lorentz, 19 May 1911, AHQP.
- 22.
Carl Runge, “Woldemar Voigt,” Gött. Nachr., 1920, 46–52, on 50.
- 23.
Planck to Josef Strasser, 14 December 1930, quoted in Armin Hermann, Max Planck in Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten (Reinbek b. Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1973), 11.
- 24.
Max Planck, “Religion and Natural Science,” in Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers, trans. Frank Gaynor (New York: Greenwood, 1968), 151–87, on 183.
- 25.
Max Planck, “Physics and World Philosophy,” in Philosophy of Physics, trans. W. H. Johnston (New York: Norton, 1936), 9–39, on 34.
- 26.
Neo-humanism, a set of ideas important in nineteenth-century German secondary and higher education, is associated with the ideal of a physical world picture (Pyenson, Young Einstein, 176).
- 27.
Étienne Klein and Marc Lachièze-Rey, The Quest for Unity, trans. Axel Reisinger (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 129–30.
- 28.
Max Planck, “Dynamical Laws and Statistical Laws,” 1914, in A Survey of Physical Theory, translated R. Jones and D. H. Williams (New York: Dover Publications, 1960), 56–68, on 66.
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Jungnickel, C., McCormmach, R. (2017). Concluding Observations. In: The Second Physicist. Archimedes, vol 48. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49565-1_16
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