In most theories of the quantum measurement process changes in an observer’s perception of a state can take place without forces, as for example if a state is prepared in an eigenstate of \ but \ is measured. In the “special state” theory any change in wave function requires forces. This allows experimental tests to distinguish these ideas and in the present article two examples of such tests are considered. The first is a kind of double Stern–Gerlach experiment, the (...) second a check for angular momentum changes in a polarizer. (shrink)

In most theories of the quantum measurement process changes in an observer’s perception of a state can take place without forces, as for example if a state is prepared in an eigenstate of \ but \ is measured. In the “special state” theory any change in wave function requires forces. This allows experimental tests to distinguish these ideas and in the present article two examples of such tests are considered. The first is a kind of double Stern–Gerlach experiment, the (...) second a check for angular momentum changes in a polarizer. (shrink)

This is the first comprehensive study of Nietzsche's earliest (and extraordinary) book, The Birth of Tragedy (1872). When he wrote it, Nietzsche was a Greek scholar, a friend and champion of Wagner, and a philosopher in the making. His book has been very influential and widely read, but has always posed great difficulties for readers because of the particular way Nietzsche brings his ancient and modern interests together. The proper appreciation of such a work requires access to ideas that cross (...) the boundaries of conventional specialisms. This is now provided by M. S. Silk and J. P. Stern in their joint study of Nietzsche's book. They examine in detail its content, style and form; its strange genesis and hybrid status; its biographical background and the controversy engendered by its publication; its value as an account of ancient Greek culture and as a theory of tragedy and music; its relation to other theories of tragedy; and its place in the history of German ideas and in Nietzsche's own philosophical career. (shrink)

The first comprehensive study of Nietzsche's earliest book, The Birth of Tragedy, this important volume by M. S. Silk and J. P. Stern examines the work in detail: its place in Nietzsche's philosophical career; its value as an account of ancient Greek culture; its place in the history of German ideas, and its value as a theory of tragedy and music. Presented in a fresh twenty-first-century series livery, and including a specially commissioned preface written by Lesley Chamberlain, illuminating its (...) enduring importance and relevance to philosophical enquiry, this accessible study has been revived for a new generation of readers. (shrink)

The paper is concerned with explaining some of the principal theoretical developments in elementary particle physics and discussing the associated methodological problems both in respect of heuristics and appraisal. Particular reference is made to relativistic quantum field theory, renormalization, Feynman diagram techniques, the analytic S-matrix and the Chew — Frautschi bootstrap.

Oxford Scholarly Classics is a new series that makes available again great academic works from the archives of Oxford University Press. Reissued in uniform series design, the reissues will enable libraries, scholars, and students to gain fresh access to some of the finest scholarship of the last century.

This comes near to satisfying; but even with ipsa the change of subject from tecta to plaustra is awkward, and exsultant is inappropriate to a lumbering plaustrum . I suggest reading cisia instead of ipsa. The cisium was a fast light two-wheeled vehicle which might well jump up on a rough road; and the first three letters cis could have become the -es of the MS exsultantes. Two further points: lapis uiai is not ‘a stone on the road’ , but (...) rather the stone of the road, i.e. the paving; and utrimque is not ‘on one side or the other’ but ‘on both sides’. There remains Ernout's objection that the suppression of the final s of lapis is unlikely. One can only say that no one would have ventured to introduce by conjecture pendentibu' structas or manantibu' stillent, but both are found in Lucretius' text. (shrink)

Ancient rhetoric divided the questions which concerned the orator into the definite and the indefinite, quaestiones finitae and quaestiones infinitae, the former concerned with particular persons and occasions, the latter without any such reference. To take a simple example from Quintilian, ‘Should one marry?’ is a quaestio infinita, ‘Should Cato marry?’ a quaestio finita. The distinction was introduced, or at any rate first clearly formulated, by Hermagoras in the second century B.C., and became an established part of rhetorical theory. The (...) Greek term for the indefinite, or general, question was none of the various Latin equivalents used by Cicero attained general currency, and the Greek term prevailed. (shrink)