Forces and Fields

Last updated
First edition (publ. Thomas Nelson) ForcesAndFields.jpg
First edition (publ. Thomas Nelson)

Forces and Fields:The concept of Action at a Distance in the history of physics (1961) is a book by Mary B. Hesse, published by Philosophical library. [1]

Contents

Summary

Forces and Fields has eleven chapters. The first ten chapters consist of 5 or more sections. The eleventh, 2 sections. These chapters are titled The Logical Status of Theories, The Primitive Analogies, Mechanism in Greek Science, The Greek Inheritance, The Corpuscular Philosophy, The Theory of Gravitation, Action at a Distance, The Field Theories, The theory of Relativity, Modern Physics, and The Metaphysical Framework of Physics.

See also

Related Research Articles

Electromagnetism Science of electricity and magnetism

Electromagnetism is a branch of physics involving the study of the electromagnetic force, a type of physical interaction that occurs between electrically charged particles. The electromagnetic force is carried by electromagnetic fields composed of electric fields and magnetic fields, and it is responsible for electromagnetic radiation such as light. It is one of the four fundamental interactions in nature, together with the strong interaction, the weak interaction, and gravitation. At high energy, the weak force and electromagnetic force are unified as a single electroweak force.

In physics, the fundamental interactions, also known as fundamental forces, are the interactions that do not appear to be reducible to more basic interactions. There are four fundamental interactions known to exist: the gravitational and electromagnetic interactions, which produce significant long-range forces whose effects can be seen directly in everyday life, and the strong and weak interactions, which produce forces at minuscule, subatomic distances and govern nuclear interactions. Some scientists hypothesize that a fifth force might exist, but these hypotheses remain speculative.

Force Any action that tends to maintain or alter the motion of an object

In physics, a force is an influence that can change the motion of an object. A force can cause an object with mass to change its velocity, i.e., to accelerate. Force can also be described intuitively as a push or a pull. A force has both magnitude and direction, making it a vector quantity. It is measured in the SI unit of newton (N). Force is represented by the symbol F.

Mechanics is the area of mathematics and physics concerned with the relationships between force, matter, and motion among physical objects. Forces applied to objects result in displacements, or changes of an object's position relative to its environment.

Physics Study of the fundamental properties of matter and energy

Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. Physics is one of the most fundamental scientific disciplines, with its main goal being to understand how the universe behaves. A scientist who specializes in the field of physics is called a physicist.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to physics:

Newtons laws of motion Physical laws in classical mechanics

Newton's laws of motion are three basic laws of classical mechanics that describe the relationship between the motion of an object and the forces acting on it. These laws can be paraphrased as follows:

In physics, the principle of locality states that an object is influenced directly only by its immediate surroundings. A theory that includes the principle of locality is said to be a "local theory". This is an alternative to the concept of instantaneous "action at a distance". Locality evolved out of the field theories of classical physics. The concept is that for an action at one point to have an influence at another point, something in the space between those points must mediate the action. To exert an influence, something, such as a wave or particle, must travel through the space between the two points, carrying the influence.

In physics, action at a distance is the concept that an object can be moved, changed, or otherwise affected without being physically touched by another object. That is, it is the non-local interaction of objects that are separated in space.

Introduction to general relativity Theory of gravity by Albert Einstein

General relativity is a theory of gravitation developed by Albert Einstein between 1907 and 1915. The theory of general relativity says that the observed gravitational effect between masses results from their warping of spacetime.

<i>Physics</i> (Aristotle) Treatise by Aristotle

The Physics is a named text, written in ancient Greek, collated from a collection of surviving manuscripts known as the Corpus Aristotelicum, attributed to the 4th-century BC philosopher Aristotle.

Mary Hesse

Mary Brenda HesseFBA was an English philosopher of science, latterly a professor in the subject at the University of Cambridge.

A line of force in Faraday's extended sense is synonymous with Maxwell's line of induction. According to J.J. Thomson, Faraday usually discusses lines of force as chains of polarized particles in a dielectric, yet sometimes Faraday discusses them as having an existence all their own as in stretching across a vacuum. In addition to lines of force, J.J. Thomson—similar to Maxwell—also calls them tubes of electrostatic inductance, or simply Faraday tubes. From the 20th century perspective, lines of force are energy linkages embedded in a 19th-century unified field theory that led to more mathematically and experimentally sophisticated concepts and theories, including Maxwell's equations, electromagnetic waves, and Einstein's relativity.

<i>The Evolution of Physics</i> Book by Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld

The Evolution of Physics: The Growth of Ideas from Early Concepts to Relativity and Quanta is a science book for the lay reader. Written by the physicists Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld, it traces the development of ideas in physics. It was originally published in 1938 by Cambridge University Press. It was a popular success, and was featured in a Time cover story.

The natural sciences saw various advancements during the Golden Age of Islam, adding a number of innovations to the Transmission of the Classics. During this period, Islamic theology was encouraging of thinkers to find knowledge. Thinkers from this period included Al-Farabi, Abu Bishr Matta, Ibn Sina, al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham and Ibn Bajjah. These works and the important commentaries on them were the wellspring of science during the medieval period. They were translated into Arabic, the lingua franca of this period.

Classical mechanics Physics Branch concerned with the motion of macroscopic objects

Classical mechanics is a physical theory describing the motion of macroscopic objects, from projectiles to parts of machinery, and astronomical objects, such as spacecraft, planets, stars, and galaxies. For objects governed by classical mechanics, if the present state is known, it is possible to predict how it will move in the future (determinism), and how it has moved in the past (reversibility).

Field (physics) Physical quantities taking values at each point in space and time

In physics, a field is a physical quantity, represented by a scalar, vector, or tensor, that has a value for each point in space and time. For example, on a weather map, the surface temperature is described by assigning a number to each point on the map; the temperature can be considered at a certain point in time or over some interval of time, to study the dynamics of temperature change. A surface wind map, assigning an arrow to each point on a map that describes the wind speed and direction at that point, is an example of a vector field, i.e. a 1-dimensional (rank-1) tensor field. Field theories, mathematical descriptions of how field values change in space and time, are ubiquitous in physics. For instance, the electric field is another rank-1 tensor field, while electrodynamics can be formulated in terms of two interacting vector fields at each point in spacetime, or as a single-rank 2-tensor field.

<i>The Feynman Lectures on Physics</i> Textbook by Richard Feynman

The Feynman Lectures on Physics is a physics textbook based on some lectures by Richard Feynman, a Nobel laureate who has sometimes been called "The Great Explainer". The lectures were presented before undergraduate students at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), during 1961–1963. The book's co-authors are Feynman, Robert B. Leighton, and Matthew Sands.

Physics is the natural science which examines basic concepts such as mass, charge, matter and its motion and all that derives from these, such as energy, force and spacetime. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the world and universe behave.

History of the philosophy of field theory

Field theory had its origins in the 18th century in a mathematical formulation of Newtonian mechanics, but it was seen as deficient as it implied action at a distance. In 1852, Michael Faraday treated the magnetic field as a physical object, reasoning about lines of force. James Clerk Maxwell used Faraday's conceptualisation to help formulate his unification of electricity and magnetism in his electromagnetic theory.

References

  1. Hesse, Mary B. (1961). Forces and Fields: The Concept of Action at a Distance in the History of Physics. Dover Publications.