{"title":"Niels Bohr’s Psychological Analogies and Quantum Measurement","authors":"Anja Skaar Jacobsen","doi":"10.1007/s00016-026-00342-7","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s00016-026-00342-7","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>In this paper, I suggest that a closer look at Bohr’s analogies to psychology helps us to better understand his interpretation of quantum measurement and how he conceived of the role of the subject in quantum physics. This focus helps us to pinpoint how Bohr’s view on quantum measurement differed from John von Neumann’s and Wolfgang Pauli’s understandings of it. I argue that Bohr’s interpretation of quantum measurement was about ensuring that quantum mechanics is an objective description of quantum phenomena. For Bohr, objective knowledge meant knowledge that can be communicated unambiguously, which requires that there is a sharp division between subject and object. He was adamant that in physics, there is such a sharp division, including in quantum physics. Therefore, he argued, there is no measurement problem in quantum physics.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":727,"journal":{"name":"Physics in Perspective","volume":"28 1-2","pages":"6 - 38"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2026-04-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s00016-026-00342-7.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148613288","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Nineteenth Century Natural Philosophy Course in the United States of America","authors":"Thomas B. Greenslade Jr.","doi":"10.1007/s00016-026-00344-5","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s00016-026-00344-5","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The modern American undergraduate Physics course is a descendent of the Natural Philosophy course of the nineteenth century. In this article I will discuss colleges of the time and will see how the course fitted into the overall curriculum. In an earlier article I have written about the professors who taught it, and now I turn to their students.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":727,"journal":{"name":"Physics in Perspective","volume":"28 1-2","pages":"39 - 60"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2026-04-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s00016-026-00344-5.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148613338","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Christian Joas, Climério Silva Neto, Martin Speirs, Richard Staley
{"title":"Correction: Learning from Expeditions and Physics in the Field","authors":"Christian Joas, Climério Silva Neto, Martin Speirs, Richard Staley","doi":"10.1007/s00016-026-00343-6","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s00016-026-00343-6","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":727,"journal":{"name":"Physics in Perspective","volume":"28 1-2","pages":"230 - 230"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2026-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148613977","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Christian Joas, Climério Silva Neto, Martin Speirs, Richard Staley
{"title":"Learning from Expeditions and Physics in the Field","authors":"Christian Joas, Climério Silva Neto, Martin Speirs, Richard Staley","doi":"10.1007/s00016-025-00341-0","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s00016-025-00341-0","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":727,"journal":{"name":"Physics in Perspective","volume":"27 4","pages":"337 - 339"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2026-01-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146049369","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"New Light on Bruno Rossi’s 1933 Cosmic-Ray Expedition to the Then-Italian Colony of Eritrea","authors":"Luca Campagnoni, Giulio Peruzzi, Sofia Talas","doi":"10.1007/s00016-025-00340-1","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s00016-025-00340-1","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The recent discovery of new documentation concerning Bruno Benedetto Rossi’s life and career provides new information about Italian and European cosmic-ray physics during the 1930s. The present article analyses part of this new material, focusing on documents that allow a thorough reconstruction of Rossi’s scientific expedition to Eritrea, which was a colony of fascist Italy at the time. We examine Rossi’s scientific practices step-by-step and highlight the institutional and political endeavors that allowed the expedition to take place. Discussing the fascist-colonial context of the expedition provides a key tool to understand the facts reported completely. We also consider the interesting yet forgotten scientific collaboration Rossi had on that occasion with Arthur H. Compton.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":727,"journal":{"name":"Physics in Perspective","volume":"27 4","pages":"403 - 445"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2025-12-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s00016-025-00340-1.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146049366","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Review: Steffen Ducheyne, Physics in Minerva’s Academy: Early to Mid-Eighteenth-Century Appropriations of Isaac Newton’s Natural Philosophy at the University of Leiden and in the Dutch Republic at Large, 1687–c.1750, Cynthia Kravitz, Paradise is Now: Decrypting the Secret Cosmology in Isaac Newton’s Principia","authors":"Scott Mandelbrote","doi":"10.1007/s00016-025-00339-8","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s00016-025-00339-8","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":727,"journal":{"name":"Physics in Perspective","volume":"27 4","pages":"446 - 450"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2025-11-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146049367","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Nurida Boddenberg, Martin King, Michael Stoeltzner
{"title":"The End of the Theory-Driven Era: Five Decades of Particle Physics","authors":"Nurida Boddenberg, Martin King, Michael Stoeltzner","doi":"10.1007/s00016-025-00335-y","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s00016-025-00335-y","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>For decades, research on the Standard Model dominated the field of elementary particle physics and searches for new physics beyond it were driven by the predictions of particular models, among them supersymmetry. These predictions have not borne fruit at the Large Hadron Collider, and as such physicists are increasingly turning to experiment for guidance. In this paper, we provide a philosophical analysis of the change, diagnosing it as a shift in consensus on where the field of particle physics expects the most progress and by defining general criteria whether a field is driven by theory or experiment. We base our analysis of the history of particle physics on programmatic documents issued by the large experiments, summary reports at the annual conferences assembling nearly all particle physicists, and on expert interviews and questionnaires conducted by us over the past decade.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":727,"journal":{"name":"Physics in Perspective","volume":"27 3","pages":"262 - 295"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2025-11-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s00016-025-00335-y.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145610658","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Polar Expedition of the Airship “Italia” (1928): A Chapter in the History of Physics","authors":"Matteo Leone, Nadia Robotti","doi":"10.1007/s00016-025-00338-9","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s00016-025-00338-9","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The “<i>Italia</i>” airship expedition of 1928 under the command of General Umberto Nobile was the first air expedition to the North Pole with important scientific, and especially physics, objectives. This paper will use unpublished archival documents and other primary sources to examine the extent to which these objectives were achieved, focusing on the physical research in the pack ice and on board the airship. We will also discuss the fate of the scientific equipment brought to the Pole and the role of the two physicists who took part in the expedition. It is known that when the airship hit the pack ice, ten crew members, including General Nobile and physicist František Běhounek, were trapped in the ice. Unfortunately, the other six crew members were trapped in the still-drifting airship hull, which disappeared over the Arctic Ocean. They were never found. One of them was the Italian physicist Aldo Pontremoli, whose passion for flying and scientific career will be traced here to discuss why and with what purpose he was on board this fateful flight.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":727,"journal":{"name":"Physics in Perspective","volume":"27 4","pages":"340 - 402"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2025-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s00016-025-00338-9.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146049368","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Barbara Hof, Grigoris Panoutsopoulos, Climério Silva Neto
{"title":"Competing for Collaboration on Particle Accelerators in the Multipolar Cold War World","authors":"Barbara Hof, Grigoris Panoutsopoulos, Climério Silva Neto","doi":"10.1007/s00016-025-00336-x","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s00016-025-00336-x","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This article explores the entanglement of scientific collaboration and Cold War geopolitics through the lens of four major particle accelerator complexes: CERN (Europe), JINR/Dubna and IHEP/Serpukhov (Soviet Union), and NAL/Fermilab (United States). Despite their scientific significance, the origins and evolution of their exchange programs remain understudied. Moving beyond the conventional East-West binary, we adopt a multipolar framework to analyze how these four institutions forged enduring collaborations. From the first decade of the Cold War through the 1970s détente, bilateral agreements enabled the growing flow of personnel, equipment, and knowledge between CERN, JINR, Serpukhov, and Fermilab, thereby crossing national borders and ideological divides. These institutions operated strategically within the contested arena of the Cold War constellation, where competition for scientific leadership paradoxically fostered collaboration. Although plans for a joint global accelerator remained unrealized, our analysis highlights how international collaboration evolved into a nuanced, multilevel, and multipolar interplay—one that was shaped as much by scientific ambition as by persistent asymmetries and power dynamics.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":727,"journal":{"name":"Physics in Perspective","volume":"27 3","pages":"296 - 330"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2025-10-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s00016-025-00336-x.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145610744","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}