texts and documents recommended by the teachers in class
Learning Objectives
The course aims at providing the main steps of development of modern physical and chemical sciences in a historic perspective, and particularly between the 18th and 20th century. The course is offered to the students in Physics and Astrophysics and in Chemistry for the deep links and cultural and conceptual affinities that marked the historical route of these scientific disciplines.
Prerequisites
n/a
Teaching Methods
front lectures, PowerPoint presentations
Type of Assessment
final oral exam
Course program
The course comprises three modules.
First module: development of the concepts of energy and yield, in relation to the first industrial revolution; emergence of the kinetic theory, of the caloric and electromagnetic ether; energetism and atomism; origin of statistical mechanics and of quantum theory; the Big Science and the developments of nuclear physics.
Second module: mechanicism in Mach’s and Boltzmann’s view; reversibility and entropy. Simultaneity and duration from Poincaré and Bergson. Relativity of the reference systems. Genesis of special relativity: Lorenz, Poincaré. Einstein’s 1905 works. Genesis of general relativity. Debate between Einstein and Hilbert. The discovery of gravitation waves. Relationships between science and economics in the 19th century. The spread of sciences in the british colonial empire. Classification and tassonomy as tools of hegemony. Electricity, magnetism, experiments on the vacuum and light.
Third module: aims and methodologies of Chemistry from the ancient times until the beginning of the 19th century, and particularly after the 15th century. The theories of the caloric and of phlogiston. Vis vitalis and the emergence of Organic Chemistry. The elements: classifications and discoveries, the Periodic Tables. Development and intersections of Thermodynamics with other disciplines. Biographies of some pioneers in Chemistry. Water in the History of Science.