Description
This is a follow up to the podcast and essay on the UVC. The argument in the book is that the orthodox account of this episode in the history and philosophy of science is ex post facto: the term ‘ultra-violet catastrophe’ was coined over 10 years after the event by Ehrenfest in 1911 and used in the narrative that included the demise of classical physics and the age of Planck and the quantum. The alternative narrative places Boltzmann in the central role as Planck simply employed Boltzmann’s mathematical methods to arrive at h but with a few alterations, which I do not think Boltzmann would have accepted.
Fantasy Physics: The Non-Existent Neutrino