Don Howard – författare

Every document in The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein appears in the language in which it was written, and supplementary paperback volumes present the English translations if all non-English materials. For those desiring a supplement to Volume 5, for instance, this paperback includes translations of correspondence that give a much richer picture of Einstein in his twenties and thirties than we ever had. In addition to illuminating the personal aspects of his life, the letters document his scientific activity: his concentration for years on the unfathomable problems of quanta and radiation, his extensive knowledge of experimental physics, his many fruitful interactions with experimentalists, and finally his long struggle to generalize the 1905 theory of relativity to include gravitation and accelerated frames of reference. This paperback translation does not include notes or annotation of the documentary volume and is not intended for use without the original language documentary edition, which provides the extensive editorial commentary necessary for a full historical and scientific understanding of the documents.

This volume presents Einstein's writings from the final period of his work in Switzerland. Most of the material in Volume 4 documents Einstein's search for a relativistic theory of gravitation, a search that ended in Berlin in the fall of 1915 with the completion of the general theory of relativity. Three scientific manuscripts, printed here for the first time, provide insight into Einstein's efforts to generalize his original relativity theory into a theory of gravitation. The first is a review article on the special theory of relativity. The second consists of notes that document Einstein's research on gravitation. The third manuscript contains calculations on the problem of the motion of the perihelion of Mercury. The explanation of the observed anomaly of this motion was to become one of the classical tests of general relativity. The existence of such a manuscript has not been known before now. All three of these manuscripts, along with other material in this volume, add significantly to our understanding of the creation of general relativity.This supplementary paperback volue presents only the English translations of non-English materials and is not intended for use without the original-language documentary edition.

This volume of The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein presents Einstein's writings for the two-year period starting in October 1909. The initial date marks Einstein's departure from the Swiss Patent Office at Bern, which had been his professional home for seven years, and the beginning of his first academic appointment, at the University of Zurich. The volume concludes with the masterful report that Einstein, by then a full professor at the German-language university in Prague, gave to the original Solvay Congress, the first international meeting devoted to the problems of radiation and the quantum theory. Most of Einstein's efforts during these years went into his struggle with these ever more perplexing problems of quanta, on which he made discouragingly little progress. Einstein's new academic career naturally required him to teach, and almost half of this volume consists of the previously unpublished notes he wrote in preparation for his lectures on mechanics, on electricity and magnetism, and on kinetic theory and statistical mechanics. The last of these are particularly interesting in reflecting some of his research interests.Several papers here are concerned with aspects of the special theory of relativity, but it is Einstein's article of June 1911 that is a harbinger of things to come: it contains his calculation of the bending of light in a gravitational field on the basis of his equivalence principle. Martin J. Klein is Bass Professor of the History of Science and Professor of Physics at Yale University and Senior Editor of The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein. A. J. Kox teaches history of science at the University of Amsterdam, Jurgen Renn is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Physics at Boston University, and Robert Schulmann is Assistant Professor of History at Boston University.

This volume brings together some of the best recent scholarship on what might be termed Einstein's formative period, that is, the thirty years before he obtained his first academic position in 1909. Topics covered include Einstein's early reading and his university education, his early views on scientific method and some of the crucial philosophical influences shaping those views, his early work on statistical mechanics, Brownian motion, quantum theory, relativity theory, and his youthful vision of a unified foundation for physics. Seven of the eight papers appear here in print for the first time. The contributors draw extensively upon much of the interesting new documentation, such as personal letters, including love letters to his fiancee, and unpublished manuscripts, that has come to light in the course of work on the first several volumes of {\it The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein}. This engaging book examining the young Einstein from a variety of perspectives---personal, scientific, historical, and philosophical--- will be accessible to a broad general readership.

In The Challenge of the Social and the Pressure of Practice, philosophers, sociologists, and historians of science offer a multidisciplinary view of the complex interrelationships of values in science and society in both contemporary and historic contexts. They analyze the impact of commercialization and politicization on epistemic aspirations, and, conversely, the ethical dilemmas raised by \u201cpractically relevant\u201d science in today's society. For example, much scientific research over the past quarter century has been guided by the financing that supports it. What effect has this had on the quality of research produced and the advancement of real knowledge? The contributors reveal how social values affect objectivity, theory, and the direction of inquiry, and examine the byproducts of external value systems in topics such as \u201cexpertise\u201d and \u201csocially robust knowledge,\u201d among others. They view science's own internal value systems, the earlier disconnection of societal values from the scientific process, and the plausibility of \u201cvalue free\u201d science.The Challenge of the Social and the Pressure of Practice presents an in-depth analysis that places the role of values at the center of philosophical debate and raises questions of morality, credibility, and the future role of values in scientific inquiry.

This book is for physicists, historians and philosophers of physics as well as students seeking an introduction to ongoing debates in relativistic and quantum physics. This title is unique in that: - it comprises contributions by leading physicists, philosophers and historians of science; - it covers the recent debates on the emergence of relativity and quantum theory; - it includes chapters with an introductory character, comprehensible to students and science teachers; - it can be used in graduate level courses in the history and philosophy of science; - it strengthens the bonds between the communities of scientists, historians, and philosophers.

This book is for physicists, historians and philosophers of physics as well as students seeking an introduction to ongoing debates in relativistic and quantum physics. This title is unique in that: - it comprises contributions by leading physicists, philosophers and historians of science; - it covers the recent debates on the emergence of relativity and quantum theory; - it includes chapters with an introductory character, comprehensible to students and science teachers; - it can be used in graduate level courses in the history and philosophy of science; - it strengthens the bonds between the communities of scientists, historians, and philosophers.

Why is there something rather than nothing?This is the question that comes before all others—the one that stands at the edge of thought, language, and being. Neither theological nor purely scientific, it is a question that refuses to be confined to any one discipline. It is not about how the universe works or where it came from. It is about why anything exists at all.Before Being is a philosophical inquiry into the most fundamental mystery: the possibility that from the absence of all things—no time, no space, no structure, no potential—something arose. And not just matter or energy, but pattern, awareness, freedom, and the capacity for love, loss, and meaning.Rather than approaching the question with preloaded answers, this book follows it with restraint and seriousness. Drawing on philosophy, metaphysics, and reflections shaped by both science and lived experience, it explores two core possibilities: that being emerged without cause, through instability or spontaneous coherence; or that it was willed into existence—not by a being among beings, but by a source outside the categories of law, logic, or necessity.What would it mean to live in a universe that was not imposed, but allowed? Where intention, if it exists, does not declare itself, but withdraws—making space for moral freedom and the possibility of meaning that must be chosen, not assigned?Written with intellectual clarity and urgency, Before Being does not argue for a final answer. Instead, it stays with the question, following its path from metaphysical beginnings to existential consequence. Along the way, it considers the nature of nothingness, the emergence of structure, the silence of the universe, and the fragile reality of good and evil.This is not a book of doctrine, speculation, or persuasion. It is a sustained philosophical reflection shaped by decades of thought. It does not ask the reader to adopt a position. It asks only that we take the question seriously—and that we remain with it long enough to hear what it may reveal, not by being solved, but by being followed.For readers drawn to the mystery at the root of existence—whether through science, philosophy, or contemplative life—Before Being offers a rigorous, respectful, and deeply human inquiry into the question that still remains.

Why is there something rather than nothing?Most answers to this question either speculate about what lies beyond experience or retreat into silence. After Nothingdoes neither.Beginning from what is simply here — a world that is structured, conscious, normative, and free — Don Howard reasons backward by strict transcendental argument to what the ground of reality must be like in order for such a world to exist. Not what it might be. Not what we might prefer it to be. What it must be.The result is a set of derived constraints on the ground of reality — precise, cumulative, and progressively tightened across fifteen chapters. These constraints are tested against the features of experience that resist easy explanation: consciousness, freedom, evil, suffering, love, and death. Each test sharpens the account and requires that it hold under pressure.What emerges is not a familiar conclusion. The categories we have inherited — from science, theology, and philosophy — prove insufficient to what the argument establishes. The deepest reason may not lie in a failure of thought, but in a structural limit of finite description itself.After Nothing is a work of serious philosophical argument. The opening chapters are demanding; what follows, while still rigorous, becomes more accessible as the argument unfolds. Readers who follow the full trajectory will arrive not at a final answer, but at something more precisely located: a carefully earned account of what reality must allow — and the point at which explanation reaches its limit.Second volume in The Origins of Existence Trilogy. It can be read independently, though the full arc is cumulative.