Abstract

The symmetry – one of the most important concepts of natural science - in physical theory expressed the invariance of some structural feature of the physical world under some transformation. A number of important physical principles stipulate that some physical quantity is conserved. Usually the symmetry is connected with space-time theory, but the impact of the symmetry theory can be traced in solid-state physics, quantum chemistry, theory of elementary particles as well as many other scientific branches. A very important mathematical result – that of the mathematician Emma Noether - shows that each conservation law is derivable from the existence of an associated symmetry. The symmetries express the fact that physical systems related by symmetry transformations behave alike in their evolution. This article is an epistemological investigation of the concept of symmetry in physics