Zwischen Wärmestoff und kinetischer Gastheorie—Die Behandlung der Physik der Wärme durch Hermann Helmholtz

In spite of the fact that Helmholtz made a decisive contribution to the first principle of thermodynamics by his Erhaltung der Kraft of 1847 he did not participate actively in the following debates about the nature of heat. Probably he was cautious in some way as he did not yet belong to the community of university physicists. His research concentrated on physiology at that time. On the other hand he was rather influential by his public speeches and his comprehensive reviews on problems of heat even without further publications. Insofar the discussion of Helmholtz's activities on heat of the time before he became chairholder of physics in 1871 will help to understand his special relation to physics in this early period.      

Cosmology with weak lensing surveys

Weak gravitational lensing is responsible for the shearing and magnification of the images of high-redshift sources due to the presence of intervening mass. Since the lensing effects arise from deflections of the light rays due to fluctuations of the gravitational potential, they can be directly related to the underlying density field of the large-scale structures. Weak gravitational surveys are complementary to both galaxy surveys and cosmic microwave background observations as they probe unbiased nonlinear matter power spectra at medium redshift. Ongoing CMBR experiments such as WMAP and a future Planck satellite mission will measure the standard cosmological parameters with unprecedented accuracy. The focus of attention will then shift to understanding the nature of dark matter and vacuum energy: several recent studies suggest that lensing is the best method for constraining the dark energy equation of state. During the next 5 year period, ongoing and future weak lensing surveys such as the Joint Dark Energy Mission (JDEM; e.g. SNAP) or the Large-aperture Synoptic Survey Telescope will play a major role in advancing our understanding of the universe in this direction. In this review article, we describe various aspects of probing the matter power spectrum and the bi-spectrum and other related statistics with weak lensing surveys. This can be used to probe the background dynamics of the universe as well as the nature of dark matter and dark energy.     

“天人合一”对设计思维的启示

目的通过分析人类模仿自然的设计天性,研究"天人合一"的思想如何在设计心理中体现以及对设计思维的影响和启示。方法通过研究设计进化史,对比分析人与自然万物的关系,运用"天人合一"的思想结合设计实例,探讨人类设计心理的活动以及设计思维的变化。结论地球上的生物是一个整体,设计源于自然,立身于生活,设计师应当在设计思维中遵循"天人合一"的思想,更多地赋予设计作品自然、人性、生命与宇宙的思考,在作品中传达出一种设计哲学。     

A quintessential introduction to dark energy

Most of the energy in the Universe consists of some form of dark energy that is gravitationally self-repulsive and that is causing the expansion of the Universe to accelerate. The possible candidates are a vacuum energy density (or, equivalently, a cosmological constant) and quintessence, a time-evolving, spatially inhomogeneous component with negative pressure. In this review, we focus on quintessence and ideas on how it might solve the cosmic coincidence problem, how it might be distinguished observationally from a cosmological constant, and how it may affect the overall cosmic history of the Universe.     

J. J. Thomson on the Nature of Matter: Corpuscles and the Continuum

Abstract.   Historical accounts of the work of J. J. Thomson find a contradiction in his work. On the one hand, he is presented as a Maxwellian theoretical physicist dealing with a typically Victorian entity, the ether. On the other hand, the analysis of his experimental work at the Cavendish seems to have little connection with his mathematical work. In this paper, I discuss the metaphysical views of J. J. Thomson, and argue that his deep belief in the ultimate continuity of matter can be seen to give a framework to both his theoretical and his experimental work. His metaphysical beliefs were not in the least shaken by the discovery of discrete phenomena and entities, not even by his suggestion of the existence of corpuscles later known as electrons. His formation in Cambridge, together with some ideas that he acquired in his youth at Owens College, Manchester, are the key to understanding his metaphysics and the role it plays in his scientific work.     

Technological innovation and Western values

This paper provides some explanations as to why modern technology originated in the West, and why firms in the United States and Western Europe lead in technological innovation. In the paper technology is viewed as a subsystem of a cultural system, including ideas and norms. The values identified as underpinning the West's preeminence in technology are the desire to control and bend nature to serve human needs; reliance on reason as the sole means of understanding the world as well as for the solution of problems relating to the material universe; emphasis on individualism and change; and acceptance of happiness as the supreme good. The historical development of these values and their inter-relationships with technology and other related parameters, notably science and the economic system, are discussed.     

E. O. Hoppé’s Portraiture: The Maker,Patronage, the Public

Emil Otto Hoppé established himself as the leading producer of photographic portraits in Edwardian London, a position he augmented until the mid-1920s. Particular aesthetic, psychological and philosophical ideas undergirded his practices – practices which, in some respects, were then unconventional. His portrait work helped him to achieve some celebrity as an influential cultural figure, and this status in turn advanced his career as a portrait maker. Three important determinants of Hoppé’s portrait output are identified and elaborated upon: ‘The Maker’ (Hoppé himself); ‘Patronage’ (the actual or assumed demands of customers, including sitters); and – an entity that is less easy to define – ‘The Public’. Hoppé claimed, of certain eminent figures, that he had made ‘the recognised face’, and the sense of public recognition here implies that the likeness must combine intense insight with extensive circulation in the illustrated press. Viewed in retrospect, the range of Hoppé’s portraits – from such leading politicians as Philip Snowden, through such society beauties as Lady Hazel Lavery, to artists, including Jacob Epstein and Rudyard Kipling – punctuated a particular period of history, the cultural moment at which emerging aspects of twentieth-century modernity could be discerned. Exemplary in this respect, despite its unusual collage nature, is Hoppé’s depiction of the Italian Futurist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti.     

Sage of Lacock

Abstract

‘The good is oft interred with their bones.’ Much of what has been written of William Henry Fox Talbot has done him meagre justice: criticism for patenting his inventions, accusations that he patented the ideas of others, denigration of the importance of his discoveries. Though acknowledged as a scientist, his place as an artistic worker in the medium he invented has not been appreciated.     

论图形表意的原始性特征

我们可以说,人类最早用来表意的不是文字而是图形。这一点我们从已经发现的四千到八千年前的象形文字可以判断,图形的出现要比文字久远的多。当图形发展到一定程度的时候,部分惯用的图形由繁到简,由具象到抽象再到符号逐步确定了下来。文字最终脱离了图形,形成了它独立的表意系统。     

The Limits of Schumpeter's Business Cycles

Schumpeter designed Business Cycles as his major work, but it has never received much attention. The problem is partly related to its complex treatment of the theory of waveform economic evolution and the related study of the statistics and history of 150 years of capitalist evolution, but the book also makes a deliberate analytical delimitation: the emphasis on economic evolution and the placement of institutional change as an external factor. This definition of the task did not allow Schumpeter to make a full-blown study of the history of capitalist evolution. To some extent, he overcame that problem in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, but we have to return to the works of his youth to understand his conception of the coevolutionary processes of socio-economic life.     

Egypt on Glass

Abstract

In 1883 Willard D. Chamberlain, at the age of 35, became Vice-President of the Beaver Soap Company of Dayton, Ohio^1,2, a fact which has not hitherto featured prominently in treatises on the history of photography. There is at least an indirect connection, nevertheless; Willard Chamberlain was very much a man of his time^3,4, and photography was an important element in his later life. In any event, it is not surprising that a man of his social position and affluence would eventually make the ‘Grand Tour’. Indeed, he did this twice, visiting the Middle East in 1893 and 1898⁵. Besides taking his own photographs, he purchased whatever lantern slides were commercially available. We do not know how he first became interested in photography (he left no diaries or notes), but we do know that he was serious enough about it to have a darkroom in his home⁶. Alas, his work was of indifferent quality, as exemplified by most of the 34 glass lantern-slides which he made and which are now in the Archives and Special Collections of the Wright State University Library⁷. However, the 49 slides by Bonfils and nine by Lekegian, which he purchased and brought back with him, attest to his connoisseurship in the matter.     

Paul Erman: Experimentelle Elektrizitätsforschung zwischen romantischer Naturphilosophie und aufgeklärtem Rationalismus

Paul Erman was the first professor of physics at the University of Berlin, founded in 1810. He was an outspoken opponent of romantic physics and especially of sciences like mesmerism, which was popular at the periphery of romantic philosophy. In the introduction a short biography of Erman is given, followed by a presentation of his position towards Romanticism. As will be shown, Erman didn’t criticize the ideas about the unity of nature, the concept of polarity or the use of analogies by romantic physicists, but instead used these in his own research. Nevertheless he was well aware of the limitations of such concepts and often warned against an overestimation of their power. In the last part of the essay Erman’s electrophysiological research is examined. He developed research strategies which aimed towards a positivistic physiology. This became the dominant approach to physiology especially in Germany in the later 19th century.     

Photographs in the Janos Scholz Collection

Abstract

Janos Scholz (1903–1993), who was to become one of the great cellists of the twentieth century, began collecting when he was a child in Sopron, Hungary. After completing his studies at the Royal Hungarian Academy of Music, Scholz was named first cellist with the Budapest Symphony Orchestra. In 1932 he joined the Roth Quartet, and the following year he left Hungary to tour with the quartet in the United States. He became an American citizen in 1933 and made his home in New York until his death in 1993. Scholz began to collect prints and drawings in 1935 and over the next three decades he amassed an unrivalled collection ofItalian drawings. In keeping with the nature of his life as a musician, in which he shared his music through public recitals, Scholz announced in 1973 that he had decided to give his drawings to the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York. Soon afterwards he began a new collection, one that focused upon nineteenth-century European photographs on paper.     

Rudolph Clausius – A pioneer of the modern theory of heat

Rudolph Clausius (1822–1888) played an important role in advancing the theory of heat during the 19th century. His contributions concerned the development of the two fundamental principles of heat as well as the microscopic approach of kinetic theory where he introduced the new concept of the mean free path. He always strictly separated these two fields. When Clausius took up his studies the idea that heat belonged to the so-called imponderables which were weightless and invisible had not yet disappeared. Carnot had still used that idea for his well-known cycle. Clausius was able to make the Carnot-cycle compatible with the concept of heat as a kind of motion.His research opened the way for thermodynamics later chiefly advocated by Planck as well as for modern statistical physics mainly connected with the names of Maxwell and Boltzmann. Scientific education and research of Clausius will be discussed here in the context of the development of the theory of heat. As he published most of his important papers on this subject already during the first two decades of his career we confine on this period. Clausius began his studies in Berlin in 1840, habilitated there in 1850 and was appointed at the newly founded Polytechnical School in Zürich in 1855. It will be shown that Clausius remained an outsider in the physics community of his time as he himself did not perform any research experiments.     

Cosmic Problems for Condensed Matter Experiment

Condensed matter analogs of the cosmological environment have raised the hope that laboratory experiments can be done to test theoretical ideas in cosmology. I will describe Unruh's sonic analog of a black hole (“dumbhole”) that can be used to test Hawking radiation, and some recent proposals on how one might be able to create a dumbhole in the lab. In this context, I also discuss an experiment already done on the helium-3 AB system by the Lancaster group. PACS numbers: 04.70.-s, 67.57.Np.     

On Supramolecular Self-Assembly: Interview with Samuel Stupp

Ranging from 2D assemblies to peptide amphiphile-based biomaterials, Prof. Samuel Stupp and his team have enriched the scientific community with many breakthroughs in the field of supramolecular self-assembly. This Interview offers the unique possibility to share some highlights along his journey, providing also a glimpse to his vision of the future of supramolecular chemistry. Interdisciplinarity is an integral part of Prof. Stupp's research philosophy, and, using his own words, “it is the only way to understand the complex universe around us and help society along the way”. What a great guideline to us all!     

Aaron Siskind

Abstract

When I met Aaron Siskind in his home in Pawtucket, a short, stocky figure slowly greeted me with an infectious smile. He was open and gracious about the interview—he did not mind the recorder and seemed very pleased by my interest in his life and work. Files, boxes and prints surrounded us in his dining room, all carefully labelled and organized. He was conscious, and proud, of his place in history. In conversation, he proved to be, at once, both prickly and charming, and his deep, rumbling laughter punctuated much of our conversation. He admitted to a faulty memory in 1989, his 86th year. But we talked for two hours and even then I was sorry to leave with so much more to discuss     

Rationality, imagination and intelligence: some boundaries in human decision-making

This paper explores the concept of 'bounded rationality' bycontrasting it to notions of rationality that are not bounded.It mainly attempts to deepen understanding of the concept byoutlining and comparing different versions of 'bounded rationality',in this case the versions of Herbert A. Simon, George Shackleand James G. March. Simon is the 'father' of procedural rationality,at least in modern times. His ideas, and those of his CarnegieSchool colleagues, about bounded, or limited, rationality enablerecognition of the importance of behavioral and cognitive incompleteness.Shackle was a loner in economics because he took seriously theimportance of time, not in a mathematical but in a psychologicalsense. The paper will exploit his ideas to argue the importanceof imagination as an integral part of human decision-making.Finally, March is known for his more irrational models of humandecision-making. The pursuit of intelligence in the longer runrequires us occasionally to betray the canons of rationalityin the short run. These three sets of ideas lead to differentversions of bounded rationality: procedural, aesthetic and retrospectiverationality respectively.     

Über die Variationsrechnung in Hilberts Werken zur Analysis

The paper deals with some of the developments in analysis against the background of Hilbert's contributions to the Calculus of Variations. As a starting point the transformation is chosen that took place at the end of the 19th century in the Calculus of Variations, and emphasis is placed on the influence of Dirichlet's principle. The proof of the principle (the “resuscitation”) led Hilbert to questions arising in the 19th and 20th problems of his famous Paris address in 1900: theexistence in a generalized sense, and theregularity of solutions of elliptic partial differential equations. By this new concept Hilbert pointed out two very important issues the history of which is closely tied up with the rise of modern analysis. Further on, Hilbert'stheorem of independence of the Calculus of Variations, an important contribution to its formal apparatus as well as to its field theory, is briefly discussed. But even as Hilbert published his first essential results, he was turning his attention to another area of mathematics that differs in an important respect from the Calculus of Variations:integral equations. Hilbert did so because he recognized that in this branch by its flexibility he was coming closer to his goal of an unifying methodological approach to analysis.     

Edward Linley Sambourne (1844–1910)

Abstract

Edward Linley Sam bourne worked as a Punch cartoonist from 1867 until his death in 1910.¹ Beginning his 43-year association with the magazine as a freelance contributor he then joined the permanent staff in 1871 as Cartoon Junior (to Tenniel who was Cartoonist-in-Chief). His rise through the Punch ranks meant a commensurate increase in his workload and, because of this, he took up photography in the early 1880s to assist his productivity and to satisfy his demand for accuracy. Sometimes Sam bourne copied the entire photograph, occasionally he even traced it; or else he used elements of a photograph or several photographs to construct the picture for the final drawing. Gradually, Sam bourne the Cartoonist became Sambourne the Photographer as his interest in drawing was supplanted by a fascination with photography; he developed an enthusiasm for the medium in an amateur way, joining the Camera Club in April 1893 and slowly amassing an enormous archive comprising some 30,000 images. To follow Sambourne's development as a photographer involves looking at how and why he used photography, and what his private as well as his public attitude was towards the medium.