The Oxford Handbook of the History of Physics brings together cutting-edge writing by more than twenty leading authorities on the history of physics from the seventeenth century to the present day. By presenting a wide diversity of studies in a single volume, it provides authoritative introductions to scholarly contributions that have tended to be dispersed in journals and books not easily accessible to the general reader

List of Contributors VII

Introduction 1

PART I. PHYSICS AND THE NEW SCIENCE

1. Was There a Scientific Revolution? 7

2 . Galileo's Mechanics of Natural Motion and Projectiles 25

3. Cartesian Physics 56

4. Physics and the Instrument-Makers, 1550- 1700 96

5. Newton's Principia 109

6. Newton's Optics 166

7. Experimentation in the Physical Sciences of the Seventeenth Century 199

8. Mathematics and the New Sciences 226

PART II. THE LONG EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

9. The Physics of Imponderable Fluids 267

10. Physics on Show: Entertainment, Demonstration, and Research in the Long Eighteenth Century 299

11. Instruments and Instrument-Makers, 1700-1850 326

12. Mechanics in the Eighteenth Century 358

13.Laplace and the Physics of Short-Range Forces 406

14. Electricity and Magnetism to Volta 432

PART III. FASHIONING THE DISCIPLINE: FROM NATURAL PHILOSOPHY TO PHYSICS

15. Optics in the Nineteenth Century 445

16. Thermal Physics and Thermodynamics 473

17. Engineering Energy: Constructing a New Physics for Victorian Britain 508

18. Electromagnetism and Field Physics 533

19. Electrodynamics from Thomson and Maxwell to Hertz 571

20. From Workshop to Factory: The Evolution of the Instrument-Making Industry, 1850-1930 584

21. Physics Textbooks and Textbook Physics in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries 651

22. Physics and Medicine 679

23. Physics and Metrology 698

PART IV. MODERN PHYSICS

24. Rethinking 'Classical Physics 721

25. The Emergence of Statistical Mechanics Olivier Darrigol and Jurgen Renn 765

26. Three and a Half Principles: The Origins of Modern Relativity Theory 789

27. Quantum Physics 814

28. The Silicon Tide: Relations between Things Epistemic and Things of Function in the Semiconductor World 860

29. Physics and Cosmology 892

Name Index 923

Subject Index 936

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