The twentieth century has witnessed a striking transformation in
the un derstanding of the theories of mathematical physics. There
has emerged clearly the idea that physical theories are
significantly characterized by their abstract mathematical
structure. This is in opposition to the tradi tional opinion that
one should look to the specific applications of a theory in order
to understand it. One might with reason now espouse the view that
to understand the deeper character of a theory one must know its
abstract structure and understand the significance of that struc
ture, while to understand how a theory might be modified in light
of its experimental inadequacies one must be intimately acquainted
with how it is applied. Quantum theory itself has gone through a
development this century which illustrates strikingly the shifting
perspective. From a collection of intuitive physical maneuvers
under Bohr, through a formative stage in which the mathematical
framework was bifurcated (between Schrodinger and Heisenberg) to an
elegant culmination in von Neumann's Hilbert space formulation the
elementary theory moved, flanked even at the later stage by the
ill-understood formalisms for the relativistic version and for the
field-theoretic altemative; after that we have a gradual, but
constant, elaboration of all these quantal theories as abstract
mathematical struc tures (their point of departure being von
Neumann's formalism) until at the present time theoretical work is
heavily preoccupied with the manip ulation of purely abstract
structures."
General
| Imprint: |
Kluwer Academic Publishers
|
| Country of origin: |
Netherlands |
| Series: |
The Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science, 5a |
| Release date: |
September 1975 |
| First published: |
1975 |
| Editors: |
C.A. Hooker
|
| Dimensions: |
235 x 155 x 32mm (L x W x T) |
| Format: |
Paperback
|
| Pages: |
622 |
| Edition: |
Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 1975 |
| ISBN-13: |
978-90-277-0613-3 |
| Categories: |
Books >
Science & Mathematics >
Science: general issues >
Philosophy of science
|
| LSN: |
90-277-0613-1 |
| Barcode: |
9789027706133 |
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