''The Logic of Modern Physics'' is a 1927
philosophy of science book by American physicist and Nobel laureate
Percy Williams Bridgman
Percy Williams Bridgman (April 21, 1882 – August 20, 1961) was an American physicist who received the 1946 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the physics of high pressures. He also wrote extensively on the scientific method and on other a ...
. The book is notable for explicitly identifying, analyzing, and explaining
operationalism for the first time, and coining the term
operational definition
An operational definition specifies concrete, replicable procedures designed to represent a construct. In the words of American psychologist S.S. Stevens (1935), "An operation is the performance which we execute in order to make known a concept." F ...
. Widely read by scholars in the
social sciences, it had a huge influence in the 1930s and 1940s, and its major influence on the field of psychology in particular surpassed even that on methodology in physics, for which it was originally intended.
History
The Logic of Modern Physics is a 1927
philosophy of science book by American physicist and Nobel laureate
Percy Williams Bridgman
Percy Williams Bridgman (April 21, 1882 – August 20, 1961) was an American physicist who received the 1946 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the physics of high pressures. He also wrote extensively on the scientific method and on other a ...
notable for explicitly identifying, analyzing, and explaining
operationalism for the first time.
[Sarkar, Sahotra and Pfeifer, Jessica (2005) ''The Philosophy of Science: An Encyclopedia, Volume 1']
p. 76
/ref>
Pragmatic philosophers like Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce ( ; September 10, 1839 – April 19, 1914) was an American philosopher, logician, mathematician and scientist who is sometimes known as "the father of pragmatism".
Educated as a chemist and employed as a scientist for ...
in the 1870s had already advanced solutions to the related ontological problems.
Also, Sir Arthur Eddington
Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington (28 December 1882 – 22 November 1944) was an English astronomer, physicist, and mathematician. He was also a philosopher of science and a populariser of science. The Eddington limit, the natural limit to the lumi ...
had discussed notions similar to operationalization in 1920 before Bridgman.[Eddington, A. (1920). '' s:Space Time and Gravitation''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.] Bridgman's formulation, however, became the most influential.
Influence
Operationalism can be considered a variation on the positivist theme, and, arguably, a very powerful and influential one.[Crowther-Heyck, Hunter (2005) ''Herbert A. Simon: The Bounds of Reason in Modern America']
p. 65
/ref>
The book was widely read by scholars in the social sciences, in which it had a huge influence in the 1930s and 1940s,behaviorism
Behaviorism is a systematic approach to understanding the behavior of humans and animals. It assumes that behavior is either a reflex evoked by the pairing of certain antecedent stimuli in the environment, or a consequence of that individual ...
), where it has been even greater than that on the methodology in physics, for which it was originally intended.[Green, Christopher D. (1992) ]
Of Immortal Mythological Beasts: Operationism in Psychology
' in ''Theory & Psychology'', 2, pp. 291–320 Examples of the influence on psychology in the 1930s and 1940s include Stanley Smith Stevens
Stanley Smith Stevens (November 4, 1906 – January 18, 1973) was an American psychologist who founded Harvard's Psycho-Acoustic Laboratory, studying psychoacoustics, and he is credited with the introduction of Stevens's power law. Stevens autho ...
(''The Operational Basis of Psychology'' and ''The Operational Definition of Psychological Concepts''), and Clark L. Hull (''The Principles of Behavior: An Introduction to Behavior Theory'').[Crowther-Heyck (2005]
p. 352
note 18 Since then, it has been the central influence of the official epistemology governing psychological method for the whole century."[Koch, Sigmund (1992) ''Psychology's Bridgman vs. Bridgman's Bridgman: An Essay in Reconstruction.'', in '' Theory and Psychology'' vol. 2 no. 3 (1992) p. 275]
See also
* Edward C. Tolman
*Heisenberg uncertainty principle
In quantum mechanics, the uncertainty principle (also known as Heisenberg's uncertainty principle) is any of a variety of mathematical inequalities asserting a fundamental limit to the accuracy with which the values for certain pairs of physi ...
*Henry Schultz
Henry Schultz (September 4, 1893 – November 26, 1938) was an American economist, statistician, and one of the founders of econometrics. Paul Samuelson named Schultz (along with Harry Gunnison Brown, Allyn Abbott Young, Henry Ludwell Moore, F ...
* Herbert A. Simon
* Talcott Parsons
Notes and references
External links
Online excerpt
{{DEFAULTSORT:Logic of Modern Physics
1927 non-fiction books
Philosophy of science books
Contemporary philosophical literature
Social sciences books
Positivism
Epistemology of science