Beschreibung
First edition, very rare inscribed offprint. "In the years around 1900 there was much interest in 'kosmische Physik', or what in the English-speaking world was called 'cosmical physics', an ambitious attempt to create a synthetic research programme covering essential parts of the earth sciences and the astronomical sciences. The central research problems of cosmical physics were often taken to be terrestrial phenomena in relation to the solar system, including geomagnetic storms, the aurora borealis, meteorites and atmospheric electricity, but there was no agreement as to what the term signified, more precisely. 'In recent time few branches of science have made such great progress as cosmical physics,' wrote the Swedish chemist and physicist Svante Arrhenius in 1903. The Times repeated that cosmical physics is a department of science which is 'growing rapidly and healthily'. The sentiment was shared by many meteorologists, geophysicists and astronomers who saw a bright future for the new interdisciplinary field . . . Cosmology and cosmogony in the wider sense of the terms 'the structure and origin of the universe at large' had no place in the large majority of works on cosmical physics that focused on the Earth and its relations to the Sun or the solar system. However, in a few cases, such as in Birkeland, Arrhenius and Trabert, a cosmological perspective did enter, if in the case of Trabert only in a limited way. Birkeland and Arrhenius were in this respect exceptions, since both of them extrapolated their ideas of cosmical physics into elaborate cosmological theories. The main difference between the two Scandinavian cosmical physicists was that Arrhenius' theory went even farther by including the origin of life, and also that it (in part for this reason) attracted more attention than Birkeland's theory . . . In papers and books between 1903 and 1913 Arrhenius developed his ideas into a qualitative cosmological theory of a universe infinite in both space and time. He argued for what later became known as the cosmological principle, namely, that the universe is uniformly populated throughout with stars and nebulae, a claim that he justified methodologically rather than observationally. Since he also insisted that the universe is infinitely large, he was forced to accept a universe containing an infinity of gravitationally interacting stars, including the conceptual problems that such a picture implies. In 1896 Hugo von Seeliger had demonstrated that such a model of the universe could not be brought into agreement with Newton's law of gravitation without leading to physical absurdities. Arrhenius, aware of Seeliger's objection but without properly understanding it, denied that there was a problem with the infinite Newtonian universe" (Kragh, The rise and fall of cosmical physics: notes for a history, ca. 1850-1920). Large 8vo, pp. [iv], 15, [1, blank], [4]. Original printed wrappers (minor chips at corners, slightly faded along edges). Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers ABE-1609266747234
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