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Books > Science & Mathematics > Physics > Quantum physics (quantum mechanics)
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Photons - The History and Mental Models of Light Quanta (Hardcover, 1st ed. 2018)
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Photons - The History and Mental Models of Light Quanta (Hardcover, 1st ed. 2018)
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This book focuses on the gradual formation of the concept of 'light
quanta' or 'photons', as they have usually been called in English
since 1926. The great number of synonyms that have been used by
physicists to denote this concept indicates that there are many
different mental models of what 'light quanta' are: simply finite,
'quantized packages of energy' or 'bullets of light'? 'Atoms of
light' or 'molecules of light'? 'Light corpuscles' or 'quantized
waves'? Singularities of the field or spatially extended structures
able to interfere? 'Photons' in G.N. Lewis's sense, or as defined
by QED, i.e. virtual exchange particles transmitting the
electromagnetic force? The term 'light quantum' made its first
appearance in Albert Einstein's 1905 paper on a "heuristic point of
view" to cope with the photoelectric effect and other forms of
interaction of light and matter, but the mental model associated
with it has a rich history both before and after 1905. Some of its
semantic layers go as far back as Newton and Kepler, some are only
fully expressed several decades later, while others initially
increased in importance then diminished and finally vanished. In
conjunction with these various terms, several mental models of
light quanta were developed-six of them are explored more closely
in this book. It discusses two historiographic approaches to the
problem of concept formation: (a) the author's own model of
conceptual development as a series of semantic accretions and (b)
Mark Turner's model of 'conceptual blending'. Both of these models
are shown to be useful and should be explored further. This is the
first historiographically sophisticated history of the fully
fledged concept and all of its twelve semantic layers. It
systematically combines the history of science with the history of
terms and a philosophically inspired history of ideas in
conjunction with insights from cognitive science.
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