[ATHENA] Seminaire Lumiere Jed Buchwald 3 fevrier ENS

["dymfau2" (dymfau2 AT orange.fr via athena Mailing List) <athena AT services.cnrs.fr>]

Rappel
Séminaire histoire de la Lumière, organisé par Arnaud Mayrargue (SPHERE- Univ Paris Diderot) et Danielle Fauque (GHDSO – Univ Paris Sud Orsay)

avec le soutien du CAPHES, de SPHERE et du GHDSO.

Séance du Mercredi 3 février 2016, 14h30-16h, salle Celan (ENS)
Rez de chaussée, couloir AB, 45 rue d’Ulm

Compte tenu des consignes de sécurité, il est recommandé de disposer de ses papiers d’identité pour le contrôle à l’entrée.
Merci aussi de nous signaler si possible votre venue par retour de ce mail

Jed Buchwald (California Institute of Technology)

The Principles of Ray Optics Before the Wave Theory of Light

    Although the central physical image of optics in the late 18th and early 19th century presumed light to consist of particles governed by forces (the emission theory), no quantitative results with empirical consequences ever resulted from that assumption, with the partial exception of Laplace's _expression_ for the relation between index of refraction and density. Nevertheless, Malus and then Biot in France, as well as Brewster in England, did generate testable claims that both Biot and Brewster insisted were independent of the emission theory. Adopting Thomas Young's terminology, we will call the ray-based theory deployed by these investigators (and others before and after them) the selectionist theory of light. That theory presumed the independent existence and persistence of a countably-finite set of physical rays, whatever such things might actually consist of. Wave optics altogether rejected any such notion, with the consequence that results obtained by Malus, Biot and Brewster could no longer be accepted – though in the principal case of partial reflection, whose theory was due to Malus, no difference could at the time be detected between his formulae and the ones produced by Fresnel.

Bibliographie récente de Jed Buchwald
Jed Z. Buchwald et Robert Fox (eds), The Oxford Handbook of the History of Physics (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013).
Jed Z. Buchwald (ed), A Master of Science History. Essays in Honor of Charles Coulston Gillispie, Archimedes, vol. 30 (2012).
Jed Z. Buchwald et Mordechai Feingold, Newton and the Origin of Civilization (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2013).
Jed Z. Buchwald et Diane Greco Josefowicz), The Zodiac of Paris. How an Improbable Controversy over an Ancient Artifact Provoked a Modern Debate over Religion and Science (Princeton, Princeton University Press. 2010).