Overview
- Presents key works by the outstanding Soviet philosopher of science Boris Hessen, available in English for the first time
- Revives important ideas that were lost after the author's execution by Stalin in 1936
- Adds essential new perspectives to current debates on emergence
Part of the book series: History of Physics (HIPHY)
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Table of contents (12 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
This book presents key works of Boris Hessen, outstanding Soviet philosopher of science, available here in English for the first time. Quality translations are accompanied by an editors' introduction and annotations. Boris Hessen is known in history of science circles for his “Social and Economic Roots of Newton’s Principia” presented in London (1931), which inspired new approaches in the West. As a philosopher and a physicist, he was tasked with developing a Marxist approach to science in the 1920s. He studied the history of physics to clarify issues such as reductionism and causality as they applied to new developments. With the philosophers called the “Dialecticians”, his debates with the opposing “Mechanists” on the issue of emergence are still worth studying and largely ignored in the many recent works on this subject. Taken as a whole, the book is a goldmine of insights into both the foundations of physics and Soviet history.
Editors and Affiliations
About the editors
Chris Talbot has a Ph.D. in General Relativity. He lectured in mathematics at the University of Huddersfield, researching in Engineering Mathematics. Now retired, he has edited letters of David Bohm (David Bohm, Causality and Chance, Letters to Three Women, Springer, 2017 and David Bohm’s Critique of Modern Physics, Letters to Jeffrey Bub, 1966-1969, Springer, 2020). Studying Bohm’s work revived his interest in Marxism and the philosophy of physics and led to the translation of the largely forgotten work of Boris Hessen.
Olga Pattison completed B.Sc. in Maths and M.A. in Finance, MITI (Member of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting since 1996). Between 1991 and 1999, Olga worked as an inhouse translator for Glencore UK Ltd. Duties included translation and interpreting at the World Economic Forum (Davos) in 1993 and 1994. She worked at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, for 16 years until retiring last year.Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Boris Hessen: Physics and Philosophy in the Soviet Union, 1927–1931
Book Subtitle: Neglected Debates on Emergence and Reduction
Editors: Chris Talbot, Olga Pattison
Translated by: Chris Talbot, Olga Pattison
Series Title: History of Physics
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70045-4
Publisher: Springer Cham
eBook Packages: Physics and Astronomy, Physics and Astronomy (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-70044-7Published: 18 May 2021
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-70047-8Published: 19 May 2022
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-70045-4Published: 17 May 2021
Series ISSN: 2730-7549
Series E-ISSN: 2730-7557
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: IX, 169
Number of Illustrations: 6 b/w illustrations, 1 illustrations in colour
Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics and Cosmology, History and Philosophical Foundations of Physics, Russian, Soviet, and East European History, Philosophy of Science, Political Philosophy