An Idiot's Fugitive Essays on Science: Methods, Criticism, Training, Circumstances

When, after the agreeable fatigues of solicitation, Mrs Millamant set out a long bill of conditions subject to which she might by degrees dwindle into a wife, Mirabell offered in return the condition that he might not thereby be beyond measure enlarged into a husband. With age and experience in research come the twin dangers of dwindling into a philosopher of science while being enlarged into a dotard. The philosophy of science, I believe, should not be the preserve of senile scientists and of teachers of philosophy who have themselves never so much as understood the contents of a textbook of theoretical physics, let alone done a bit of mathematical research or even enjoyed the confidence of a creating scientist. On the latter count I run no risk: Any reader will see that I am untrained (though not altogether unread) in classroom philosophy. Of no ignorance of mine do I boast, indeed I regret it, but neither do I find this one ignorance fatal here, for few indeed of the great philosophers to explicate whose works hodiernal professors of phil- osophy destroy forests of pulp were themselves so broadly and specially trained as are their scholiasts. In attempt to palliate the former count I have chosen to collect works written over the past thirty years, some of them not published before, and I include only a few very recent essays.

Table of Contents:
I. Aims, Programs, and Methods.- 1. Experience, Theory, and Experiment (1955).- 2. The Field Viewpoint in Classical Physics.- 3. Modern Continuum Mechanics in Adolescence (1962).- 4. Purpose, Method, and Program of Nonlinear Continuum Mechanics.- 5. War, Socialism, and Quantum Mechanics.- 6. The Tradition of Elasticity.- 7. Statistical Mechanics and Continuum Mechanics (1973, 1979).- 8. Our Debt to the French Tradition: "Catastrophes" and Our Search for Structure Today (1978, 1981).- 9. Draw from the Model and Imitate the Antique (1979).- 10. The Role of Mathematics in Science as Exemplified by the Work of the Bernoullis and Euler (1979, 1981).- 11. Conceptual Analysis.- II. Criticism: Selected Reviews.- A. Writing and Texts for Living Science.- 12. A Comment on Scientific Writing (1954).- 13. Goldstein's Classical Mechanics (1950).- 14. Murnaghan's Finite Deformation of an Elastic Solid (1952).- 15. Novozhilov's Foundations of the Nonlinear Theory of Elasticity (1953).- B. The light of History Upon the Present.- 16. Critical Problems in the History of Science (1961).- 17. Dugas' Histoire de la Mecanique (1953).- 18. Jammer's Concepts of Mass in Classical and Modern Physics (1963).- 19. Clagett's The Science of Mechanics in the Middle Ages (1961).- 20. Stevin's Works on Mechanics (1957).- 21. Dugas' La Mecanique au XVIIeSiecle (1956).- 22. Costabel's Leibniz and Dynamics (1975).- 23. John Bernoulli and L'Hopital (1958).- 24. The Works of James Bernoulli (1973).- 25. Daniel Bernoulli's Hydrodynamica (1960).- 26. Rouse & Ince's History of Hydraulics (1959).- 27. Hankins' Jean d'Alembert (1971).- 28. The Mathematical and Physical Papers of G. G. Stokes (1966).- 29. Gillmor's Coulomb (1973).- 30. Timoshenko's History of Strength of Materials (1953).- 31. Szabo's Geschichte der mechanischen Prinzipien und ihrer wichtigsten Anwendungen (1979).- III. Biography and Circumstances.- 32. Genius Conquers and Despises the Establishment: Newton.- a. Newton's Letters (1960, 1962).- b. Newton's Mathematical Works (1973, 1977).- 33. Genius Turns the Establishment to Profit: Euler.- a. Euler's Letters (1960/1977).- b. Euler's Early Manuscripts on Mechanics (1967).- c. A Sample: Ten out of Seventy-three (1958/1981).- d. Leonard Euler, Supreme Geometer (1972, 1982).- 34. The Establishment Stifles Genius: Herapath and Waterston (1968, 1982).- 35. Genius and the Establishment at a Polite Standstill in the Modern University: Bateman (1976, 1981).- IV. Training.- 36. The Scholar's Workshop and Tools (1970, 1976, 1981).- 37. Has the Private University a Future? (1976).- V. Philosophy?.- 38. Is there a Philosophy of Science? (1973).- 39. Suppesian Stews (1980/1981).- VI. Dirge.- 40. The Scholar: A Species Threatened by Professions (1972).- 41. The Computer: Ruin of Science and Threat to Mankind (1979/1982).- 42. Of All and of None (1964).- Index of Names Mentioned.