Einstein’s 1905 “Revolutionary” Paper on Quanta as a Manifest and Detailed Example of a “Principle Theory”

Antonino Drago

University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy.

DOI: 10.4236/ahs.2014.33013                

Abstract

In the last times some scholars tried to characterize Einstein’s distinction between “constructive” —i.e. deductive-theories—and “principle” theories, the latter ones being preferred by Einstein. Here this distinction is qualified by an accurate inspection on past physical theories. Some previous theories are surely non-deductive theories. By a mutual comparison of them a set of features—mainly the arguing according to non-classical logic—are extracted. They manifest a new ideal model of organising a theory. Einstein’s paper of 1905 on quanta, qualified by him as presenting a “principle theory”, is interpreted according to this model of theory. Some unprecedented characteristic features are manifested. At the beginning of the same paper Einstein declared one more dichotomy about the kind of mathematics in theoretical physics. These two dichotomies are recognized to constitute the foundations of theoretical physics. With respect to these dichotomies the choices by Einstein in the paper on quanta are the alternative choices to Newton’s ones. This fact gives reason to the “revolutionary” nature that Einstein attributed to his paper.

Keywords

Quanta, Einstein, Principle Theory, Kinds of Organization, Kinds of Mathematics

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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