Boris Hessen: Physics and Philosophy in the Soviet Union, 1927¿1931

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 Principiä 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.

Presents key works by the outstanding Soviet philosopher of science Boris Hessen, available in English for the first time

1. Introduction.- 2. The Fifth Congress of Russian Physicists.- 3. On Comrade Timiryazev's Attitude to Modern Science.- 4. On the Bicentenary of Isaac Newton's Death. Foreword to the Articles by A. Einstein and J.J. Thomson.- 5. Marian Smoluchowski (On the tenth anniversary of his death).- 6. Mechanical Materialism and Modern Physics (Section 1).- 7. Mechanical Materialism and Modern Physics (Section 2)