Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Scientific History and the Lessons for Today's Emerging Ideas - Technology Review

Scientific History and the Lessons for Today's Emerging Ideas - Technology Review Today, Helge Kragh at Aarhaus University in Denmark puts the record straight by re-examining the end-of-the-century, or fin-de-siecle, physics and the ideas that dominated it...
One theory  widely discussed for several years was put forward by William Thomson, aka Lord Kelvin, who believed that atoms were vortices in the ether. Curiously, physicists never proved this idea wrong. Instead, it simply ran out steam...
Kraghe describes various other episodes in fascinating detail. What's interesting of course is the extent to which it is possible to draw parallels between the trends in science then and now.

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