THE EMERGENCE OF TWO OPTIONS FROM EINSTEIN’S FIRST PAPER ON QUANTA (1905)
THE EMERGENCE OF TWO OPTIONS FROM EINSTEIN’S FIRST PAPER ON QUANTA (1905)

Author(s): Antonino Drago
Subject(s): History
Published by: Scientia Socialis, UAB
Keywords: Black body; Einstein; Kind of mathematics; Kind of organisation; Non–classical logic; Alternative foundations;
Summary/Abstract: Two aspects of Albert Einstein’s 1905 paper (On an Heuristic point of view concerning the Production and Transformation of Light) are examined: the kind of organisation of the theory and the kind of mathematics. It is shown that Albert Einstein (1879–1955) substantially made use of constructive mathematics,which is alternative to classical mathematics. Moreover, it is shown that Einstein organised the presentation according to the model of a problem–based theory, a model that is alternative to the traditional model of a deductive theory. This result makes it possible to illustrate in details the logical structure of Einstein’s paper. In the history of theoretical physics, Einstein’s theory was the first to manifest a consistent foundation on both the above–mentioned choices, which are the alternative to the Newtonian. In this profound sense this paper was very revolutionary.

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