state of crisis

By the end of the ordinal century, application of these laws had solved all those problems of the behavior of the Solar dodging that were detectable with existing instruments (with one profound exception: the shine of the Sun). By the mid-nineteenth century, with the stripping of Neptune in a position previously determined by freshlytonian calculations, Greco-Roman mechanics had achieved a profound predictive triumph as well.

In the 18th century, however, classical mechanics seemed limited to the behavior of large bodies. Theories of heat such as the caloric theory had only the loosest experience to classical mechanics. The conservation of energy across transformations was not soon enough recognized. By the middle of the nineteenth century, however, the underlying unity of mechanical, chemical, and some other forms of energy was established, while the effects of heat and pressure upon gasses had been successfully based upon classical mechanics.

The very triumph of classical mechanics, however, plant the seeds of crisis. The problem was that the solution of the problem of kinetic heat brought with it the discovery of the plump for Law of Thermodynamics and the phenomenon of entropy. The problems with the Second Law were twofold, both cerebrate: first, that the Second Law did not stem directly from the pretence of the interaction of objects, and second, that it was statistical in its operation.

To take these points in order, classical mechanics may be loosely charact

Buchwald, Jed Z. From Maxwell to Microphysics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.

Hiebert, Erwin N. "The State of physical science at the go game of the Century." In Mario Bunge and William R. Shea, Rutherford and Physics at the Turn of the Century. New York: Dawson, 1979, pp. 3-22.

Cohen, I. Bernard. Revolution in Science. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1985.

Helmholtz, Hermann. "On the interaction of Natural Forces." In Popular Lectures on Scientific Subjects. E. Atkinson, tr. New York: Appleton and Company, 1873, pp. 153-93.

It is difficult to grasp Maxwell's original interpretation of electromagnetic fields, since his conceptions sometimes differed radically from present-day understandings.

Nevertheless, it is clear that from the outset, electromagnetic theory force a picture of the universe that was primaevally different from that bony by mechanical physics. Indeed, electromagnetism may fairly be called the trigger of a revolution in physics; among those who were profoundly influenced by their exposure to electromagnetic theory was Albert Einstein.

Lacking this perspective, new nineteenth-century physicists found themselves perplexed by the Second Law. Some argued that the Second Law was not in fact a fundamental law of physics. Others went a different direction, and began to question the very bottom of the mechanical view. Ernst Mach, for example, argued that atoms were only a conceptual convenience--a model, in recent terms--and not necessarily "real" entities. Another German physicist, Ostwald, suggested that the mechanical world view was a metaphysical construct that had no proper place in rigorous physics. Attempts were made to realise a new interpretation of physics, energetics, which would proceed from thermodynamics rather than mechanics.

Lizhi, Feng; and Chu Yaoquan. From Newton's Laws to Einstein's hypothesis of Relativity. Beijing: Sciences Press, 1987.

Electromagnetism differed from mechanism in a
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