Physicists in different branches of the discipline were puzzled by the problem of mass during the 1950s and 1960s: why do objects have mass? Around the same time, yet working independently, specialists in gravitational studies and in particle theory proposed that mass might arise due to objects' interactions with a new (and as yet undetected) field. Although the questions they posed and even the answers they provided shared several similarities - and even though both proposals quickly became `hot topics' in their respective subfields - virtually no one discussed one proposal in the light of the other for nearly 20 years. Only after massive, unprecedented changes in pedagogical infrastructure rocked the discipline in the early 1970s did a new generation of physicists begin to see possible links between the Brans-Dicke field and the Higgs field. For the new researchers, trained in different ways than most of their predecessors, the two objects of theory were not only similar - some began to proclaim that they were exactly the same. Charting the histories of these two objects of theory illuminates the complicated institutional and pedagogical factors that helped to produce a new subfield, particle cosmology, which today ranks at the very forefront of modern physics.
...More
Book
Lange, Marc;
(2002)
An Introduction to the Philosophy of Physics: Locality, Fields, Energy, and Mass
(/isis/citation/CBB000201447/)
Book
Sample, Ian;
(2010)
Massive: The Missing Particle That Sparked the Greatest Hunt in Science
(/isis/citation/CBB001023169/)
Article
Sébastien Rivat;
(2021)
Drawing scales apart: The origins of Wilson's conception of effective field theories
(/isis/citation/CBB008943795/)
Article
Mermin, N. David;
(2011)
Understanding Einstein's 1905 Derivation of E=mc2
(/isis/citation/CBB001024236/)
Article
Craik, Alex D. D.;
(2013)
“Continuity and Change”: Representing Mass Conservation in Fluid Mechanics
(/isis/citation/CBB001211054/)
Article
Charis Charalampous;
(2019)
‘One common matter’ in Descartes' physics: the Cartesian concepts of matter quantities, weight and gravity
(/isis/citation/CBB263097797/)
Article
Crossland, Rachel;
(2013)
“Multitudinous and Minute”: Early Twentieth-Century Scientific, Literary and Psychological Representations of the Mass
(/isis/citation/CBB001320816/)
Book
Jammer, Max;
(2000)
Concepts of Mass in Contemporary Physics and Philosophy
(/isis/citation/CBB000110960/)
Article
Smeenk, Christopher;
Myrvold, W. C.;
(2011)
Introduction: Philosophy of Quantum Field Theory
(/isis/citation/CBB001024245/)
Book
Fraser, Gordon;
(1998)
The Particle Century
(/isis/citation/CBB000110625/)
Article
Ducheyne, Steffen;
(2011)
Testing Universal Gravitation in the Laboratory, or the Significance of Research on the Mean Density of the Earth and Big G, 1798--1898: Changing Pursuits and Long-Term Methodological--Experimental Continuity
(/isis/citation/CBB001034295/)
Article
Banks, Erik C.;
(2002)
Ernst Mach's “New Theory of Matter” and His Definition of Mass
(/isis/citation/CBB000300602/)
Article
Krafft, Fritz;
(2002)
Schweretheorie und Weltbild des Nikolaus von Kues: Zu ihrer vermeintlichen Modernität
(/isis/citation/CBB000740319/)
Book
Bodanis, David;
(2000)
E=MC2: A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation
(/isis/citation/CBB000101939/)
Article
Castellani, Elena;
(2002)
Reductionism, Emergence, and Effective Field Theories
(/isis/citation/CBB000201200/)
Article
Hartmann, Stephan;
(2001)
Effective Field Theories, Reductionism and Scientific Explanation
(/isis/citation/CBB000100731/)
Article
McMullin, Ernan;
(2002)
The Origins of the Field Concept in Physics
(/isis/citation/CBB000200074/)
Article
Belot, Gordon;
(2003)
Symmetry and Gauge Freedom
(/isis/citation/CBB000340844/)
Article
Dieks, Dennis;
(2001)
Space and Time in Particle and Field Physics
(/isis/citation/CBB000100729/)
Article
Rowe, David E.;
(2001)
Einstein Meets Hilbert: At the Crossroads of Physics and Mathematics
(/isis/citation/CBB000102532/)
Be the first to comment!