Edited by Julie Candler Hayes (NHC Fellow, 2004–05) and Judith P. Zinsser Until recently, the marquise Du Châtelet (1706-1749) was more remembered as the companion of Voltaire than as an intellectual in her own right. While much has been written about his extraordinary output during the years he spent in her company, her own work … Continued
By Martin H. Krieger (NHC Fellow, 1978–79) Marginalism and Discontinuity is an account of the culture of models employed in the natural and social sciences, showing how such models are instruments for getting hold of the world, tools for the crafts of knowing and deciding. Like other tools, these models are interpretable cultural objects, objects that … Continued
By Douglas M. Jesseph (NHC Fellow, 1993–94) In 1655, the philosopher Thomas Hobbes claimed he had solved the centuries-old problem of "squaring of the circle" (constructing a square equal in area to a given circle). With a scathing rebuttal to Hobbes’s claims, the mathematician John Wallis began one of the longest and most intense intellectual … Continued
Edited by Valia Allori (NHC Fellow, 2017–18) The book explores several open questions in the philosophy and the foundations of statistical mechanics. Each chapter is written by a leading expert in philosophy of physics and/or mathematical physics. Here is a list of questions that are addressed in the book: Boltzmann showed how the phenomenological laws … Continued
By Michael J. White (NHC Fellow, 1988–89) This book presents a detailed analysis of three ancient models of spatial magnitude, time, and local motion. The Aristotelian model is presented as an application of the ancient, geometrically orthodox conception of extension to the physical world. The other two models, which represent departures from mathematical orthodoxy, are … Continued
By Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs (NHC Fellow, 1978–79) In this major reevaluation of Isaac Newton's intellectual life, Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs shows how his pioneering work in mathematics, physics, and cosmology was intertwined with his study of alchemy. Professor Dobbs argues that to Newton those several intellectual pursuits were all ways of approaching Truth, and … Continued