Physics as a Calling : : Discipline and Practice in the Königsburg Seminar for Physics / / Kathryn M. Olesko.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Cornell University Press Archive Pre-2000
• VerfasserIn: Olesko, Kathryn M.,
• Place / Publishing House: Ithaca, NY : : Cornell University Press, , [2019]; ©1991
• Year of Publication: 2019
• Language: English
• Series: Cornell History of Science
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (512 p.) :; 30 b&w illustrations

In this book, Kathryn M. Olesko reconstructs in fine detail the evolution, across the nineteenth century, of Franz Neumann's physics seminar at Königsberg University in East Prussia. Established during a period of in tense educational reform and intellectual debate in the sciences, the seminar turned out academic physicists as well as secondary school teachers. As the first official science seminar to incorporate mathematical considerations, Neumann's institute pioneered the integration of two quantitative traditions in physics—the mathematical and the exact experimental.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Foreword -- Contents -- Figures and Tables -- Preface -- Note on Citations -- Abbreviations -- Introduction -- PART I. DISCIPLINE -- CHAPTER ONE. Educational Reform and the Natural Sciences -- CHAPTER TWO. Quantification in Physics Teaching and Research -- CHAPTER THREE. Shaping a Pedagogical Physics -- CHAPTER FOUR. Mechanics and the Besselian Experiment -- CHAPTER FIVE. Successes and Realizations -- CHAPTER SIX. Error Analysis and Measurement -- CHAPTER SEVEN. Interpolation and Certainty -- CHAPTER EIGHT. Error over Truth -- PART II. PRACTICE -- CHAPTER NINE. The Workaday World of Physiklehrer -- CHAPTER TEN. The Ethos of Exactitude -- Epilogue -- APPENDIX ONE. Provisional Statutes of the Seminar for Mathematics and Physics at the University of Konigsberg -- APPENDIX TWO. Neumann’s Cycle of Lecture Courses -- APPENDIX THREE. Directory of Identified Seminar Students -- Glossary of German Terms -- Index