Search

Copyright of Acta Universitatis Carolinae Historia Universitatis Carolinae Pragensis is the property of Charles University Prague, Karolinum Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article provides a comprehensive outlook on the history of physics in the Czech lands in the era of Enlightenment and its heritage in the first half of the 19th century. Enlightenment in the Czech lands was a process of reforms directed from the imperial court, whose part was also the directive to teach experimental physics at the universities in Prague and Olomouc. After overcoming the Aristotelianism of Jesuit physics, it was dominated by Joseph Stepling, later the new research of electrical phenomena with the personality of the autodidact Prokop Diviš and at its end the influence of the professors František Petřina and Christian Doppler. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of History of Sciences & Technology / Dějiny Věd a Techniky is the property of Society for the History of Sciences & Technology and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article provides a succinct overview of the history of physics in the Czech lands in the period delimited by the events following the defeat of the Bohemian Revolt on one end and the start of the epoch of the Enlightenment on the other. After the counter-reformation, the period is marked by the dominance of the scholars of the Jesuit order. The author identifies the personalities of this time as well as the context of the research in natural philosophy, mechanics, optics, magnetism, and the vacuum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Acta Universitatis Carolinae Historia Universitatis Carolinae Pragensis is the property of Charles University Prague, Karolinum Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Newton's ideas didn't prevail over Carthesianism quickly or easily and there was a long dispute between the supporters of both sides, motivated not only scientifically, but nationally and emotionally as well. French Newtonianism was not identical to Newton's own ideas and had many specific attributes. It often overstepped the purview of science and became a part of popular culture. The essay concludes with an assessment of the particular contribution of French Enlightenment researchers to the application of Newton's theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to further develop Kuhn's theory of scientific revolutions. We propose to discriminate the notion of a scientific revolution, which is a sociological event of a change of attitude of the scientific community with respect to a particular theory and the concept of an epistemic rupture, which is a linguistic fact consisting of a discontinuity in the linguistic framework in which this theory is formulated. On the analysis of the changes of the linguistic framework we can obtain a classification of epistemic ruptures into four types that can be named as idealization, re-presentation, objectivization and re-formulation. In the paper, each of these four types of epistemic ruptures is illustrated by examples from the history of physics. This classification of epistemic ruptures can be used as a basis for a classification of scientific revolutions. The revolutions can be classified according to the epistemic ruptures that accompany them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]