Stephen G. Brush

This volume was, IMHO, quite a bit more interesting than the first volume, I think because the material covered corresponds to more interesting physics.

To my mind the most interesting aspect of these two volumes is that they show just how fallible real-world physicists are, in the sense that
* they happily publish explanations and theories that are obviously BS,
* they get confused about what should be trivial concepts, and
* they spend phenomenal amounts of time on fussy calculations that really don't warrant the effort.
All this is relevant wrt my attitude to current day QFT, where we see much
the same confusion; enormous mathematical effort yoked to miniscule philosophical effort.… (más)

What I found most striking about this book was the reminder that nutty physicists, ridiculously extrapolating into territory far beyond what is securely known, are not new to the late 20th century, but were happily at work in the 19th century, going on about vortex atoms, atoms with ether atmospheres and so on; and, just like their modern counterparts feeling both little need to clarify and explain what they were doing to anyone else, and little doubt as to the validity of their results, in spite of theoretical, experimental and conceptual problems.

As someone who looks on, amazed, at the things proclaimed so certainly by some of the GR crowd and many of the string theory crowd, it's nice to be reminded that I really don't have to care that much about what these people are doing --- all I'm missing out on is frenzied debate about the precise details of the ether atmosphere surrounding an atom.… (más)