物理学の哲学は、量子論、空間・時間・対称性の理論、熱物理学など、現代物理学にとってとりわけ重要な問題とその奇妙な概念を扱う科学哲学の一分野です。新たな理論・応用・哲学の方向性を示すこと、物理学が解き明かした知見をもとに自然界に対する認識をいかに変えねばならないかを深く理解することが、物理学の進展に寄与します。本書では① 空間、時間、運動、②統計力学上の不可逆性問題、③量子論、の物理学にとって主要な3つのテーマに沿って物理哲学を考察します。
Philosophy of physics is concerned with the deepest theories of modern physics - notably quantum theory, our theories of space, time and symmetry, and thermal physics - and their strange, even bizarre conceptual implications. A deeper understanding of these theories helps both physics, through pointing the way to new theories and new applications, and philosophy, through seeing how our worldview has to change in the light of what we learn from physics.
This Very Short Introduction explores the core topics in philosophy of physics through three key themes. The first - the nature of space, time, and motion - begins by considering the philosophical puzzles that led Isaac Newton to propose the existence of absolute space, and then discusses how those puzzles change - but do not disappear - in the context of the revolutions in our understanding of space and time that came first from special, and then from general, relativity. The second - the emergence of irreversible behavior in statistical mechanics - considers how the microscopic laws of physics, which know of no distinction between past and future, can be compatible with the melting of ice, the cooling of coffee, the passing of youth, and all the other ways in which the large-scale world distinguishes past from future. The last section discusses quantum theory - the foundation of most of modern physics, yet mysterious to this day. It explains just why quantum theory is so difficult to make sense of, how we might nonetheless attempt to do it, and why the question has been highly relevant to the development of physics, and continues to be so.
Introduction
1:The methods and fruits of science
2:Motion and intertia
3:Relativity and its philosophy
4:Reduction and irreversibility
5:Mysteries of the quantum
6:Interpreting the quantum
Further Reading
Index
ISBN : 9780198814320
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