Introduction: the history of physic and its relevance to our lives today : The history of physics and its relevance to our lives today ; Assessment and division into epochs : A historical timeline based on the intensity of scientific activity ; Scientific knowledge from the viewpoint of the physicist of today ; Division into epochs based on theoretical synthesis ; The role of modeling. Elements of the philosophy of science : Illusory simplicity ; Reason and experience ; Pitfalls of the inductive method. The dynamism of history : Forces for progress ; Limits, possibilities, and dangers ; Uncertainty in the precision ; Physics in a new role ; Characterization of epochs in physics
1. The classical heritage : What the Greeks inherited : The beginnings of science ; Egypt and Mesopotamia. The harmonious, beautiful order : Overview: temporal, spatial, and casual connections ; Mysticism and mathematics: Pythagoras ; Idea and reality ; Plato on insight and ideas. Matter and motion: the Aristotelian synthesis : Atoms and elements ; Motion under terrestrial conditions: peripatetic dynamics ; Celestial motion ; The Aristotelian worldview ; A selection from Aristotle's metaphysics. The greatest achievements of the ancient sciences : Archimedes ; The Ptolemiac system for describing celestial motion ; Astronomy and geography ; Geometry ; Scientific instruments and technology. The twilight of Hellenism : Pessimistic philosophers ; Augustine on the absurdity of astrology ; Augustine on time
2. The stewards of the heritage : The thousand-year balance sheet : Why did progress stall? ; Europe takes shape ; The technological revolution ; Monasteries and universities. The salvage of ancient knowledge : The direct path ; Byzantium ; The Arab transmission ; Return to the source. The Indian and Arab world : The decimal system ; Algebra and algorithm ; Some outstanding contributions of Arab science. The West awakens : Fibonacci: the artist of computation ; Jordanus Nemorarius: structural engineer ; Descriptive kinematics: Nicole Oresme and Merton College ; Peripatetic dynamics reformed ; Buridan's theory of impetus ; Physics in astronomy ; Results ; Nicole Oresme on the motion of earth. Medieval natural philosophy : Faith, authority, and science ; Faith and experience. The Renaissance and physics : Art, philology, and science ; Progress in mechanics ; The science of artists ; Leonardo da Vinci ; The professional astronomers take the stage ; The role of the printing press
3. Demolition and the construction of a new foundation : The world in 1600 ; Numerology and reality : Back to Plato in a new spirit ; The retrograde revolutionary: Copernicus ; A compromise: Tycho Brahe ; Celestial harmony: Kepler. Galileo and those who stood in his shadow : The unity of the celestial and terrestrial spheres ; Inclined planes, pendulums, and projectile motion ; Galileo's greatness ; In the background: Stevin and Beeckman ; The possibility of connection. The new philosophy: doubt becomes method : Francis Bacon and the inductive method ; A method for discovering certain truth: Descartes ; The Cartesian laws of motion ; The first cosmogony ; On the periphery of western culture. Light, vacuum, and matter through the middle of the seventeenth century : The Snell-Descartes law ; Fermat's principle ; Vacuum and air pressure ; Uncertain steps on the path to modern chemistry. After Descartes and before Newton: Huygens : Huygen's axioms on dynamics ; The mathematical pendulum ; The cycloidal pendulum ; The physical pendulum ; The collision laws as consequences of the equivalence of inertial systems ; Circular motion. Newton and the Principia: the Newtonian worldview : The tasks awaiting the advent of Newton ; A force is not required to maintain a state of motion but to change it ; The law of universal gravitation ; Selections from the Principia ; Newton as philosopher
4. The completion of classical physics : Starting capital for the eighteenth century : Prior results ; Waves or particles? ; Analytic geometry ; Differential and integral calculus: the battle of the Titans ; For and against Descartes ; Voltaire and the philosophers. Worthy successors: d'Alembert, Euler, and Lagrange : Possible directions for progress ; Results in statics ; Newtonian mechanics in Euler's hands ; The first variational principle in mechanics: Maupertuis ; The first "positivist": d'Alembert ; Modern ideas ; Mechanics as poetry. The century of light : The enlightenment ; The great encyclopedia ; D'Alembert: preface to the encyclopedia ; Belief in the solid foundation of physics: Kant. From effluvium to the electromagnetic field : Peter of Maricourt and Gilbert ; The chronology of progress ; Qualitative electrostatics ; Quantitative electrostatics ; Flow of electric charge ; The magnetic field of electric currents: cross-fertilization from natural philosophy ; The interaction of currents: an extension of Newton's ideas ; Faraday: the greatest of the experimentalists ; Maxwell: the fundamental laws of electromagnetic fields ; The electromagnetics theory of light ; Lorentz's theory of the electron. Heat and energy : The thermometer ; Progressive in its day: the Caloricum theory of Joseph Black ; Rumford: but heat is still a form of motion! ; Fourier's theory of heat conduction ; Caloricum and the state equation ; The Carnot cycle ; The kinetic theory of heat: first steps ; The law of conservation of energy ; The kinetic theory of gases ; The second law of thermodynamics ; Entropy and probability. The structure of matter and electricity: the classical atom : Chemistry hinting at the atomic structure of matter ; The electron: J.J. Thomson ; Chemistry to the rescue again: the periodic table ; First ideas about the structure of the atom ; The line spectrum and the reappearance of the integers ; A farewell to the nineteenth century
5. The physics of the twentieth century : "Clouds on the horizon of nineteenth-century physics" : A conclusion or a new start? ; Mach and Ostwald. The theory of relativity : Antecedents: failed attempts at measuring absolute velocity ; Attempts at adaptation ; The protagonists: Lorentz, Einstein, and Poincare ; The measurement of distance and time ; The equivalence of energy and mass ; Matter and the geometry of space ; Einstein on space, ether, and the field problem of physics. Quantum theory : Blackbody radiation in classical physics ; Planck: entropy of points the way to the solution ; The appearance of the energy quantum ; Einstein: light is also quantized ; Bohr: the "classical" quantum theory of the atom ; The statistical derivation of the radiation formula as prelude to quantum electronics ; Heisenberg's matrix mechanics ; Einstein and Heisenberg ; Shrodinger's wave mechanics ; Heisenger: the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory ; Operators. Quantum electrodynamics ; The casualty problem ; John von Neumann on causality and hidden parameters ; Quantum mechanics as a tool and as philosophy ; What remains a classical physic?. Nuclear structure, nuclear energy : A backward glance at the first three decades ; Stations of the study of the atomic nucleus ; Becquerel: why do uranium salts fluoresce? ; The protagonists of the heroic age: the Curies and Rutherford ; The Rutherford-Bohr model begins to take shape ; The first artificial nuclear transformation ; Quantum mechanics can be applied to nuclear phenomena ; Predicted by Rutherford, found by Chadwick: the neutron ; Nuclear structure and nuclear models ; Nuclear fission: experimental evidence, theoretical doubt ; The chain reaction: the large-scale liberation of nuclear energy ; Energy through nuclear fusion: the fuel of the stars in the hands of mankind ; The responsibility of physicists. Law and symmetry : The historian's role in the description of modern physics ; The elementary particles in order of appearance ; A few words about cosmic rays ; Particle accelerators and detectors ; Fundamental interactions ; The conservation law ; Symmetry, invariance, conservation ; Mirror symmetry? ; "A bit of asymmetry improves the aesthetics" ; Back to the Apeiron? ; The Quark theory is completed. Mankind and the universe : New information channels ; Energy production in the stars ; Birth, life, death on a cosmic scale ; The formation of the universe.
Summary and preview : Physics, philosophy, and society at the turn of the millennium ; The standard model and beyond ; Groups and symmetries ; The grand unification ; The great laboratory ; Questions and doubts multiply ; "Between nothing and infinity".
