Studia Historiae Scientiarum recently published a research article in Polish by Paweł Polak in the “Science in Poland” section entitled “The role of the history of science in Marian Smoluchowski’s scientific, didactic and philosophical activities”.
In this post on our blog, Paweł Polak summarises the most important achievements of his research.
PP:
Marian Smoluchowski is known as a great physicist and a philosopher of physics, however his contribution to the history of science is almost forgotten. This striking observation leads to a question why Smoluchowski’s contribution to the history of science have been forgotten and why its value is still not recognized.
The aforementioned problems are caused partially by the pioneer character of Smoluchowski’s works, which now would hardly stand up to contemporary standards in the historiography of science. In this light it was very important to analyze the context of Smoluchowski’s work and to perform a deeper methodological analysis of his approach. If we could reject contemporary convictions – or philosophical assumptions – about the history of science, we could see how many references to the history of science could be found in Smoluchowski’s works. He claimed that the history of physics did not play any role in the context of validating physical theories, however he acknowledged its heuristic role. Smoluchowski would take advantage of the history of physics as a good starting point for a philosophical reflection, he used the history of physics to teach physics as well. Some of Smoluchowski’s contributions to the history of science are criticized by certain contemporary historians, however in general his contribution should be considered as an important stage of development of historiography of physics in Poland.
I am refering to the full article:
Paweł Polak, The role of the history of science in Marian Smoluchowski’s scientific, didactic and philosophical activities
