STS.042/8.225 [Credit: 3-0-9] Professor David Kaiser

Fall 2002 [STS.042 = HASS-CI. 8.225 = CI-M] dikaiser@mit.edu

Lectures: Tu/Thur, 2:30-4pm, Room 1-136 E51-296G; 452-3173

Subject Description: During the 20th century, both the ideas and the contexts of physics changed dramatically. In this class we will study some of the changing ideas within modern physics, ranging from relativity theory and quantum mechanics to solid-state physics, nuclear and elementary particles, and cosmology. At the same time, we will situate these ideas within shifting institutional, cultural, and political contexts. The overall aim will be to understand the changing roles of physics and of physicists over the course of the twentieth century.

Subject Requirements: As a HASS-CI (STS.042) and CI-M (8.225) Subject, there will be a heavy emphasis upon writing and oral communication. There will be three papers assigned for a total of 20-24 pages of writing over the course of the semester. The first paper (4-5pp) will be due in class on Thursday, 26 September. The second paper (6-7pp) will be due in class on Thursday, 24 October. Students will revise and resubmit their second papers, to give them an opportunity to work on specific writing skills before preparing the final paper; the paper 2 re-writes will be due in class on Tuesday, 19 November. The final paper (10-12pp) will be due in class on Tuesday, 10 December. Details of the paper assignments will be circulated in class. Students will also take turns making prepared oral presentations over the course of the semester. Presentations will involve a summary of assigned readings and presentation of study questions pertinent to that week’s material. The student will then lead the ensuing class discussion, based on her or his opening presentation. In addition to these written and oral communication assignments, there will be an in-class midterm on Thursday, 17 October. No late papers will be accepted.

Grading: Written and oral communication performance will account for 75% of the final grade. Note that HASS-CI subjects fulfill Phase One of the MIT Writing Requirement for juniors and seniors. Students must receive a grade of B- or better in order to pass Phase One.

Your final grade will be based on: Paper 1 (20%); Paper 2 (20%); Paper 3 (25%); Midterm (25%); Participation in class discussions (including oral presentation) (10%).

Reading Assignments: Required books for the subject are available for purchase at the MIT COOP, 3 Cambridge Center in Kendall Square, 499-3230. There is also a packet of readings for the subject, available on-line through the Hayden Library EReserves. The books are also on reserve at the Hayden Library Reserve Room. Reading assignments from the packet are marked with an asterisk (*) in the syllabus; these readings should be completed before each lecture. The following three books are required:

Russell McCormmach, Night Thoughts of a Classical Physicist (Cambridge: Harvard

University Press, 1991).

Michael Frayn, Copenhagen (New York: Anchor Books, 2000).

Lawrence Badash, Scientists and the Development of Nuclear Weapons: From Fission to

the Lmited Test Ban Treaty, 1939-1963 (Atlantic Highlands: Humanity Press,

1995).

Lecture Schedule and Reading Assignments

Week 1: Course Organization and Introduction

Thursday, 5 September: Introductory Lecture

Begin reading Night Thoughts of a Classical Physicist, to be completed by 12 September.

Week 2: The Nineteenth-Century Legacy

Tuesday, 10 September: Maxwell, Electrodynamics, and Cambridge Wranglers

*1. James Clerk Maxwell, Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, 3rd ed (Oxford: Clarendon, 1892), volume 1, pp. v-xii, 155-68.

*2. Bruce J. Hunt, The Maxwellians (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), pp. 73-107.

Thursday, 12 September: Mechanical and Electrodynamical World Pictures, and

the Rise of Theoretical Physics

Finish reading Night Thoughts of a Classical Physicist.

Week 3: The Origins of Special Relativity: Physical, Philosophical, Experimental

Tuesday, 17 September: Special Relativity and the Ether

*1. Isaac Newton, "Scholium," in Newton: Texts, Backgrounds, Commentaries, edited by I. Bernard Cohen and Richard Westfall (New York: W. W. Norton, 1995), pp. 231-3.

*2. Ernst Mach, The Science of Mechanics (LaSalle: Open Court, 1960), pp. 271-5.

*3. Albert Einstein, "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies," translated and reprinted in Arthur I. Miller, Albert Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity: Emergence (1905) and Early Interpretation (1905-1911) (Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1981), pp. 392-6.

Thursday, 19 September: Einstein and Experiment

*1. Gerald Holton, "Mach, Einstein, and the Search for Reality," in Gerald Holton, Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought: Kepler to Einstein, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973 [1988]), pp. 237-77.

*2. Arthur I. Miller, "The Special Theory of Relativity: Einstein’s Response to the Physics of 1905," in Albert Einstein: Historical and Cultural Perspectives, edited by Gerald Holton and Yehudah Elkana (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), pp. 3-26.

Week 4: From the Special to the General Theory

Tuesday, 24 September: The Reception of Special Relativity

*1. Andrew Warwick, "Cambridge Mathematics and Cavendish Physics: Cunningham, Campbell, and Einstein’s Relativity, 1905-1911. Part I: The Uses of Theory," Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 23 (1992): 625-56.

Thursday, 26 September: The Origins of General Relativity

*1. Henri Poincaré, Science and Hypothesis (New York: Dover, 1952 [1900]), pp. 72-5.

*2. Albert Einstein, "What is the Theory of Relativity?," in Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, edited by Carl Seelig (New York: Crown Publishers, 1954), pp. 227-32.

*3. David Kaiser, "General Relativity Primer," unpublished manuscript (© 1998).

*4. Loren Graham, "The Reception of Einstein’s Ideas: Two Examples from Contrasting Political Cultures," in Albert Einstein: Historical and Cultural Perspectives, edited by Gerald Holton and Yehudah Elkana (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), pp.107-36.

Week 5: From Quantum Theory to Quantum Mechanics

Tuesday, 1 October: Radiation, Quanta, and Atoms, 1900-1913

*1. Emilio Segrè, From X-Rays to Quarks: Modern Physicists and Their Discoveries (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1980), pp. 61-77.

*2. John L. Heilbron, "Bohr’s First Theories of the Atom," in Niels Bohr: A Centenary Volume, edited by A. P. French and P. J. Kennedy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), pp. 33-49.

Thursday, 3 October: Matrices and Waves

*1. Werner Heisenberg, "Quantum-Theoretical Re-Interpretation of Kinematic and Mechanical Relations," translated and reprinted in Sources of Quantum Mechanics, edited by B. L. van der Waerden (New York: Dover, 1967), pp. 261-6.

*2. Walter Moore, Schrödinger: Life and Thought (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 191-200.

Week 6: Interpreting Quantum Mechanics

Tuesday, 8 October: The Einstein-Bohr Debate

*1. N. David Mermin, "Quantum Mysteries for Anyone," Journal of Philosophy 78 (1981): 397-408.

*2. Niels Bohr, "The Bohr-Einstein Dialogue," in Niels Bohr: A Centenary Volume, edited by A. P. French and P. J. Kennedy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), pp. 121-40.

Thursday, 10 October: The Contexts of Quanta: Weimar Germany, Interwar US

*1. Paul Forman, "Weimar Culture, Causality, and Quantum Theory, 1918-1927: Adaptation by German Physicists and Mathematicians to a Hostile Intellectual Environment," in Darwin to Einstein: Historical Studies on Science and Belief, edited by Colin Chant and John Fauvel (New York: Longman, 1980), pp. 267-302.

*2. Alexi Assmus, "The Americanization of molecular physics," Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 23 (1992): 1-34.

Week 7: Midterm Extravaganza

Tuesday, 15 October: Columbus Day Holiday, no class.

Begin reading Michael Frayn, Copenhagen.

Thursday, 17 October: In-class Midterm Examination

Week 8: Shifting Topics and Centers

Tuesday, 22 October: Nuclear Physics in the 1930s; From Europe to America

*1. Daniel J. Kevles, The Physicists: The History of a Scientific Community in Modern America, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987 [1978]), pp. 222-35, 282-6.

Thursday, 24 October: Physics under Hitler: deutsche Physik and the bomb

*1. The Farm Hall Transcripts, edited by Charles Frank (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), pp. 70-91.

2. Michael Frayn, Copenhagen.

Week 9: The Physicists’ War

Tuesday, 29 October: Physics in the US: Radar and the Atomic Bomb

1. Lawrence Badash, Scientists and the Development of Nuclear Weapons, pp. 27-47.

*2. Robert Serber with Robert Crease, Peace & War: Reminiscences of a Life on the Frontiers of Science (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), pp. 121-44.

Thursday, 31 October: Film: The Day After Trinity

*1. Henry DeWolf Smyth, Atomic Energy for Military Purposes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1945), pp. 206-26.

*2. J. Robert Oppenheimer, "Speech to the Association of Los Alamos Scientists, November 2, 1945," in Robert Oppenheimer: Letters and Recollections, edited by Alice Kimball Smith and Charles Weiner (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980), pp. 315-25.

Week 10: The H-Bomb and Beyond

Tuesday, 5 November: McCarthyism and the Oppenheimer Hearing

*1. Heinar Kipphardt, In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Play Freely Adapted on the Basis of the Documents, translated by Ruth Speirs (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967 [1964]), pp. 69-96.

*2. Ellen Schrecker, The Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History with Documents (Boston: Bedford Books, 1994), pp. 32-40, 210-14.

3. Lawrence Badash, Scientists and the Development of Nuclear Weapons, pp.63-79, 102-8.

Thursday, 7 November: Film: The Decision to Build the H-Bomb

1. Lawrence Badash, Scientists and the Development of Nuclear Weapons, pp. 48-62, 80-88.

*2. Jeremy Bernstein, "The Need to Know," in Asymptotic Realms of Physics: Essays in Honor of Francis E. Low, edited by Alan H. Guth, Kerson Huang, and Robert L. Jaffe (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1983), pp. xvii-xxiv.

Week 11: Particles and Fields

Tuesday, 12 November: The Rise of Big Science

*1. S. S. Schweber, "The Mutual Embrace of Science and the Military: ONR and the Growth of Physics in the United States after World War II," in Science, Technology, and the Military, edited by Everett Mendelsohn, Merritt Roe Smith, and Peter Weingart (Boston: Kluwer, 1988), pp. 3-45.

Thursday, 14 November: The Conservative Revolution: QED and Renormalization

*1. Richard Feynman, QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), pp. 77-101.

Week 12: Conundrums and Conflict in Particle Theory

Tuesday, 19 November: The Challenge to Field Theory

*1. Geoffrey Chew, "Impasse for the Elementary-Particle Concept," in The Sciences Today, edited by Robert Hutchins and Mortimer Adler (New York: Arno, 1977 [1974]), pp. 366-99.

Thursday, 21 November: Quarks, Gauge Fields, and the Rise of the Standard Model

*1. Harald Fritzsch, Quarks: The Stuff of Matter (New York: Basic Books), pp. 47-87, 123-37.

Week 13: Solid-State Physics in the Lab and in the Factory

Tuesday, 26 November: Building a Solid-State Community

*1. Helge Kragh, Quantum Generations: A History of Physics in the Twentieth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), pp. 366-75.

*2. Michael Riordan and Lillian Hoddeson, Crystal Fire: The Invention of the Transistor and the Birth of the Information Age (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997), pp. 55-70.

Thursday, 28 November: Thanksgiving holiday, no class.

Week 14: Cosmology and Unification

Tuesday, 3 December: Big Bang v. Steady-State Cosmology

*1. Helge Kragh, "Big Bang Cosmology," in Cosmology: Historical, Literary, Philosophical, Religious, and Scientific Perspectives, edited by Norriss Hetherington (New York: Garland, 1993), pp. 371-89.

*2. Helge Kragh, "Steady State Theory," in Cosmology: Historical, Literary, Philosophical, Religious, and Scientific Perspectives, edited by Norriss Hetherington (New York: Garland, 1993), pp.391-404.

*3. Fred Hoyle, The Nature of the Universe (New York: Harper and Row, 1950), pp. 133-42.

Thursday, 5 December: Inflation and Superstrings

*1. Peter Galison, "Theory Bound and Unbound: Superstrings and Experiment," in Laws of Nature: Essays on the Philosophical, Scientific, and Historical Dimensions, edited by Friedel Weinert (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1995), pp. 369-408.

Week 15: Summary

Tuesday, 10 December: Course summary.

A List of Informal Suggestions*

1. History isn’t just about learning facts and dates. It’s also about understanding how and why things happened. So don’t get bogged down in taking in all the facts and dates, at the expense of the big picture. The key is to ask yourself, "Why would this event be important, and how does it relate to other events?" These questions give you the framework to hang your facts and dates on. For instance, it’s not so important to remember all the dates that show up in the narratives, but rather to ask, "Which dates refer to especially significant things, and what do they tell us about the order in which things happened?" This is not to say that you can forget all facts and dates, but it is to suggest remembering them within a meaningful context.

2. History readings often give you more details of information than you actually need to remember. Again, here the big picture is important. Authors of historical accounts often include details to make their cases more persuasive or appealing. But on the same principle as above, not all of these details need to be noted down and stored away.

3. History is interpretive. This means that people will sometimes tell different stories about events or attribute different significance to them. When you read history you should keep in mind that the accounts you have before you do not represent the final truth. This does not mean that history is simply made up or that "anything goes." Rather, these historical accounts represent the efforts of (usually) intelligent, thoughtful people to make sense of what we can find out about what happened in the past.

4. History courses often have a lot of reading. Therefore you need to practice active, intelligent reading. Keep asking yourself, "What is the point of this book or article? What am I supposed to be getting out of it?" Then organize your reading around answering those questions. Often it helps to scan material quickly to get a sense of what the point is before really getting into it; often it helps to look back over it after reading it to fix the main points in your understanding.

5. History courses use different kinds of materials that demand different kinds of reading. For instance, a narrative of someone’s life will probably be quicker and easier to read than a historian’s analysis of an event and its reasons. A collection of primary documents will make you ask different questions than will a textbook account.