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Black-Body Theory and the Quantum Discontinuity, 1894-1912
"A masterly assessment of the way the idea of quanta of radiation became part of 20th-century physics. . . . The book not only deals with a topic of importance and interest to all scientists, but is also a polished literary work, described (accurately) by one of its original reviewers as a scientific detective story."—John Gribbin, New Scientist
"Every scientist should have this book."—Paul Davies, New Scientist
"Every scientist should have this book."—Paul Davies, New Scientist
398 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1978
7 people are currently reading
336 people want to read
About the author
Thomas S. Kuhn
41Ìýbooks644ÌýfollowersAmerican historian and philosopher of science, a leading contributor to the change of focus in the philosophy and sociology of science in the 1960s. Thomas Samuel Kuhn was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. He received a doctorate in theoretical physics from Harvard University in 1949. But he later shifted his interest to the history and philosophy of science, which he taught at Harvard, the University of California at Berkeley, Princeton University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
In 1962, Kuhn published The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which depicted the development of the basic natural sciences in an innovative way. According to Kuhn, the sciences do not uniformly progress strictly by scientific method. Rather, there are two fundamentally different phases of scientific development in the sciences. In the first phase, scientists work within a paradigm (set of accepted beliefs). When the foundation of the paradigm weakens and new theories and scientific methods begin to replace it, the next phase of scientific discovery takes place. Kuhn believes that scientific progress—that is, progress from one paradigm to another—has no logical reasoning. Kuhn's theory has triggered widespread, controversial discussion across many scientific disciplines.
In 1962, Kuhn published The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which depicted the development of the basic natural sciences in an innovative way. According to Kuhn, the sciences do not uniformly progress strictly by scientific method. Rather, there are two fundamentally different phases of scientific development in the sciences. In the first phase, scientists work within a paradigm (set of accepted beliefs). When the foundation of the paradigm weakens and new theories and scientific methods begin to replace it, the next phase of scientific discovery takes place. Kuhn believes that scientific progress—that is, progress from one paradigm to another—has no logical reasoning. Kuhn's theory has triggered widespread, controversial discussion across many scientific disciplines.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
September 16, 2015
I am not crazy about Kuhn as a philosopher, but as an historian of science he is unmatched here. The Planck Black Body Law is an historical mess, and is rarely taught the way it was discovered. It was NOT developed as a response to the "ultraviolet catastrophe," which it predates. E=nhv wasn't even part of the original deduction which started instead from the entropy of an oscillator as a function of its energy and the size of the chunk e (epsilon). Planck got e=hv from Wien's law almost as a slight of hand after he knew the expression for the oscillator's entropy. And then of course it took an Einstein to convince the physics community that the radiation is quantized as well as the energy levels of the oscillators. How he did that, as explained by Kuhn, was via his "box in the box" thought experiment. At first I hated this story because it wasn't the way I learned it, now I love it because the story is so rich and real to me.
January 9, 2013
The first part is very technical, with equations, and a bit of a struggle for me. But it was interesting seeing what physics was like c. 1900.
The second part picks up the pace a bit and looks at the adoption and influence of the early quantum theory.
Kuhn's claim -- which I hadn't heard before but am now decently convinced of -- is that the folk history of quantum mechanics is wrong. In one of those surprisingly common ironies, Planck came up with the (correct) blackbody formula for all the wrong reasons. Around 1900, he was interested in defining the entropy of radiation fields, and slavishly copied Boltzmann's derivation for ideal gasses. And he found that by leaving a finite size for the elements in the analysis, he got a formula that matched observation and seemed to make sense. He didn't understand this -- and neither did anybody else -- to be a break with classical physics.
I had vaguely thought Planck was trying to solve the Ultraviolet Catastrophe and fixed it by introducing energy quanta. In fact, nobody had actually noticed the ultraviolet catastrophe in classical physics until AFTER Planck had published his [correct] law and [incorrect] classical derivation of it. It took until 1905-1908 before physicists noticed that Planck's derivation was wrong, that classical physics led inevitably to the wrong answer, and that Planck's law could be saved by introducing energy quanta.
Planck himself ones commented that "science advances one funeral at a time." This episode is a counterexample. Nobody understood the need for energy quantization until 1905. By 1915, it was widely accepted by fairly senior people (Planck, Lorentz, etc).
The second part picks up the pace a bit and looks at the adoption and influence of the early quantum theory.
Kuhn's claim -- which I hadn't heard before but am now decently convinced of -- is that the folk history of quantum mechanics is wrong. In one of those surprisingly common ironies, Planck came up with the (correct) blackbody formula for all the wrong reasons. Around 1900, he was interested in defining the entropy of radiation fields, and slavishly copied Boltzmann's derivation for ideal gasses. And he found that by leaving a finite size for the elements in the analysis, he got a formula that matched observation and seemed to make sense. He didn't understand this -- and neither did anybody else -- to be a break with classical physics.
I had vaguely thought Planck was trying to solve the Ultraviolet Catastrophe and fixed it by introducing energy quanta. In fact, nobody had actually noticed the ultraviolet catastrophe in classical physics until AFTER Planck had published his [correct] law and [incorrect] classical derivation of it. It took until 1905-1908 before physicists noticed that Planck's derivation was wrong, that classical physics led inevitably to the wrong answer, and that Planck's law could be saved by introducing energy quanta.
Planck himself ones commented that "science advances one funeral at a time." This episode is a counterexample. Nobody understood the need for energy quantization until 1905. By 1915, it was widely accepted by fairly senior people (Planck, Lorentz, etc).
December 10, 2017
Too much science for the lay reader. Parts of it seemed interesting.
It was easier to understand Kuhn's thesis (the development of the theory was not linear or regular) than to understand his support and examples.
It was easier to understand Kuhn's thesis (the development of the theory was not linear or regular) than to understand his support and examples.
April 24, 2016
This book is not geared towards a general audience. Rather, its target audience appears to be scientists with a strong background in physics and advanced calculus, given the author's choice to excerpt from journal articles and other publications and include key equations and sometimes their derivations.
In his book Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn outlined the paradigm shift process that accompanies scientific development. As a result of anomalies in the existing scientific paradigm, some scientists begin to doubt its veracity and begin to rethink it, often producing an entirely new formulation. If the product of this effort does a superior job of explaining these anomalies while remaining consistent with other observed phenomena, scientists will gradually accept it. The development of black body theory and the application of quanta to it appears to be an example of this process in that it represents the transition from classical physics to modern physics.
The development of black body theory also demonstrates the simultaneously chaotic and collaborative nature of scientific progress. Max Planck, who bore most of the burden for developing the theoretical basis, utilized statistical mechanics from Ludwig Boltzmann's kinetic theory of gases. As Planck documented portions of his work in journal articles or in lectures, other scientists examined his work, sometimes identifying errors and sometimes offering useful suggestions. For example, Planck started within the confines of classical physics. However, a newcomer on the scene named Albert Einstein quickly recognized that Planck's synthesis of black body theory would work best if it took into account discrete energy levels of emitted radiation. His suggestion was not immediately acted upon because his own theory of quanta, light particles of discrete energy levels, had not yet gained widespread acceptance in what we now know as the wave-particle duality of light. As more prominent scientists began to accept his theory, the bandwagon effect produced a growing tidal wave of black body research accounting for quanta.
Although this book is not an easy read, it is worthwhile for anyone trying to look past the ideals of scientific progress to the gritty reality.
In his book Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn outlined the paradigm shift process that accompanies scientific development. As a result of anomalies in the existing scientific paradigm, some scientists begin to doubt its veracity and begin to rethink it, often producing an entirely new formulation. If the product of this effort does a superior job of explaining these anomalies while remaining consistent with other observed phenomena, scientists will gradually accept it. The development of black body theory and the application of quanta to it appears to be an example of this process in that it represents the transition from classical physics to modern physics.
The development of black body theory also demonstrates the simultaneously chaotic and collaborative nature of scientific progress. Max Planck, who bore most of the burden for developing the theoretical basis, utilized statistical mechanics from Ludwig Boltzmann's kinetic theory of gases. As Planck documented portions of his work in journal articles or in lectures, other scientists examined his work, sometimes identifying errors and sometimes offering useful suggestions. For example, Planck started within the confines of classical physics. However, a newcomer on the scene named Albert Einstein quickly recognized that Planck's synthesis of black body theory would work best if it took into account discrete energy levels of emitted radiation. His suggestion was not immediately acted upon because his own theory of quanta, light particles of discrete energy levels, had not yet gained widespread acceptance in what we now know as the wave-particle duality of light. As more prominent scientists began to accept his theory, the bandwagon effect produced a growing tidal wave of black body research accounting for quanta.
Although this book is not an easy read, it is worthwhile for anyone trying to look past the ideals of scientific progress to the gritty reality.
January 25, 2025
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