Harman P.M. Energy, Force and Matter: The Conceptual Development of Nineteenth-Century Physics

Cambridge University Press, 1982. - 182 pp.
The period circa 1800-1900 corresponds to a distinctive phase in the conceptual development of physics, bounded by the increasing dominance, from the late eighteenth century on, of quantification and the search for mathematical laws, together with the emergence of a unified physics based on the programme of mechanical explanation, and by the development in the early twentieth century of the quantum and relativity theories. The author has aimed to provide a study of the development of physics in the nineteenth century in a form accessible to the reader without a specialised knowledge of physics and mathematics. The argument of the book is structured around the major conceptual problems of nineteenth-century physics: the emergence of energy physics and thermodynamics, the theory of the luminiferous and electromagnetic ether and the concept of the physical field, molecular physics and statistical thermodynamics, and the dominance of the programme of mechanical explanation. The book begins with an account of the transformation in the scope of the science of physics in the first half of the nineteenth century.Introduction: The Conceptual Structure of Nineteenth-Century Physics.
The Context of Physical Theory: Energy, Force, and Matter.
Energy Physics and Mechanical Explanation.
Matter and Force: Ether and Field Theories.
Matter Theory: Problems of Molecular Physics.
Epilogue: The Decline of the Mechanical World View.