Renormalization in Historical Perspective—The First Stage

Abstract

It is tempting, but generally wrong and often misleading, to interpret and understand the past of physics in terms of the concept, goals, and problems of the present. It is also tempting, and equally incorrect, to describe the present of physics as an immediate, straightforward, and all but inevitable continuation of the past. There is, finally, a strong temptation to identify a particular event, experiment, paper, or conference as marking the end of one period and the start of another, a period with new concepts and new problems. Even though this sometimes happens, more often than not the imagined sharp break, or scientific revolution, had many antecedents which prepared and suggested the new developments. This chapter discusses and analyzes some of the ideas, background, and struggles which led to the renormalization chapter in quantum electrodynamics.