Article ID: CBB096225815

Schooling the Quantum Generations: Textbooks and Quantum Cultures from the 1910s to the 1930s (2019)

unapi

Ever since Thomas Kuhn's influential The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), textbooks have suffered a bad reputation. They have been accused of distorting—at times purportedly—history and of feeding students with an unacceptably simplified and optimistic view of science. This attitude started to change only in recent times. With the increase of attention paid not only to how theories are conceived, but also how they are practiced, disseminated, and appropriated, historians have rehabilitated textbooks as a legitimate site of knowledge production. In this paper, I adopt textbooks as an instrument to unfold multiple facets of the culture that allowed quantum physics to flourish between 1900 and the early 1930s. I organize the article around two stories about two major textbooks, i.e., Sommerfeld′s Atombau und Spektrallinien and Dirac′s Principles of Quantum Mechanics. I explore the complex pedagogical cultures underlying these two masterpieces and how they intersect local agendas.

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Article Christian Joas; Thiago Hartz (2019) Quantum Cultures: Historical Perspectives on the Practices of Quantum Physicists. Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte (pp. 281-289). unapi

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Authors & Contributors
Seth, Suman
Eckert, Michael
Dennis, David Brandon
Pisano, Jessica M.
Benétreau-Dupin, Yann
Garik, Peter
Concepts
Quantum mechanics
Teaching; pedagogy
History of science, as a discipline
Physics
Science education and teaching
Science and culture
Time Periods
20th century, early
21st century
20th century, late
20th century
Places
Weimar Republic (1919-1933)
Germany
Ukraine
United States
Japan
Munich (Germany)
Institutions
Istanbul Darülfünunu
Munich. Universität
University of Tokyo
National Science Foundation (U.S.)
Kyōto Daigaku (Kyoto University)
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