A Physicist's Anschauungen Concerning Mental Imagery

Abstract

This book is an integration of historical and psychological analyses, with the goal of understanding the role of mental imagery in three seminal developments of early 20th-century physics: special relativity (1905), general relativity (1915), and quantum mechanics (1925). The book focuses on the insights that can be gleaned from Gesalt psychology, genetic epistemology, and recent theories of imagery in cognitive science. The book is divided into three sections. The first presents the comparative epistemologies of the scientists whose developments provide the data base for analyses. The second section considers the role of aesthetics and "visuability" in the transformation (and evaluation) of scientific concepts.