TWO SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT IN THE REVOLUTION IN PHYSICS AT THE T(11)

Einstein, a great scientific reformer, was philosophically sophisticated. He derived sustenance from both schools, especially from Mach and Poincare, and was profoundly influenced by Hume’s empiricism and Spinoza’s rationalism. In scientific research, he believed that “there is an external world, independent of human consciousness, which is the foundation for all natural science.”65 Moreover, he actually applied dialectic ideas, which helped him make three simultaneous, surprising, significant discoveries in 1905, thus completely beginning the revolution in physics. Einstein’s scientific achievements resulted from the admirable integration of philosophic insights, physical intuition, and mathematical skill.
Thus, a group of physicists, represented by Einstein, urged by the revolutionary wave, naturally shifted their attention to philosophy of science with which they tempered their ideological weapons. They retained the materialist viewpoint which had been inherited by the Mechanical School as well as by natural scientists, and at the same time rejected the mechanistic perspective. They absorbed skeptical empiricist views, conventionalism and some dialectic elements from the Critical School, while avoiding its narrow empiricism. In brief, they preserved of the essential tension between two opposing extremes, neither entirely recognizing nor entirely rejecting either school. Rather, they made use of the strengths and avoided the weaknesses of each, organically integrating the advantages of both schools, thus completing the task trust upon them by historical circumstances. This is the road of history, twisted yet inevitable. As Engels said, “History takes its own steps. No matter how dialectic the eventual processes, dialectics must often wait a long time for history.”66


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1 Friedrich Engels, Natural Dialectics, The People’s Publishing
House, 1972, p.225.
2 H. Helmholtz, “On the Conservation of Force,” in World Famous Works (in Japanese), 65 1973, p.235.
3 Albert Einstein, The Collected Works of Albert Einstein, edited and translated by Xu Liangying et al., Commercial Press, 1976, vol.1, pp.85-86.
4 P. Duhem, The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory, Princeton University Press, 1954, pp.71-72.
5 R.S. Shankland, “Michelson-Morley Experiment,” Am. J. Phys. 32 (1964), pp.16-35.
6 M. Born, Physics in my Generation, London, 1956, p.192.
7 S. Sakata, Physics and Method, (in Japanese), Yanbo Bookstore, 1951, p.6.
8 L. Boltzmann, Theoretical Physics and Philosophical Problems, D. Reidel Publishing Co., 1974, p.146.
9 Lord Rayleigh, “The Law of Partition of Kinetic Energy,” Phil. Mag., 49 (1900), pp.98-118.
10 Einstein, op. cit., note 3, vol.1, p.86.
11 E. Mach, The Science of Mechanics: A Critical and Historical Account of its Development, translated by T.J. McCormack, 6th ed., Open Court Pub. Co., 1960, p.273.
12 ibid., p.280.
13 ibid., p.283.
14 ibid., p.285.
15 ibid., p.597.
16 ibid., p.596.
17 Einstein, op. cit., note 3, vol.1, p.86.