Book description
MATTER AND LIGHT The New Physics By LOUIS DE BROGLIE. Originally
published in 1937. TRANSLATORS NOTE: THE Author has in certain places
modified the original French text for the English translation, for the
sake of greater cohesion, and has also revised some passages, in order
to bring them into accord with the results of later research. Occasional
Translators Notes are shown in square brackets. The chapter on The
Undulatory Aspects of the Electron has the special historical interest
of having been delivered as a Lecture on the occasion of the Authors
receipt of the Nobel Award, while that on Wave Mechanics and its
Interpretations was given as an Address at the Glasgow meeting of the
British Association in 1928. I am indebted to Dr. J. E. Turner, of the
University of Liver pool, for assistance with the translation and the
proofs, and to Dr. C. Strachan, of the same University, I am indebted
for valuable assistance in dealing with the equations and the more
technical passages, as well as for reading the proofs. W. H. J. PREFACE:
THE amiable insistence of my friend Andr George has induced me to
collect in the present Volume a number of Studies on con temporary
Physics written from both the general and the more metaphysical point of
view. Each of these Studies forms an inde pendent whole, and can be read
by itself. A slight degree of repeti tion which the reader is asked to
overlook has been the inevi table result for on more than one occasion I
have been compelled to duplicate a summary of the great fundamental
stages of con temporary Physics, such as the classification of simple
substances, the investigation of the photo-electric effect and the
origin of the Theory of Light Quanta and of Wave Mechanics the subjects
are somewhat technical, and I cannot well assume that they are common
knowledge. But though the same subject is outlined in several of these
Studies, I have tried to take up a different point of view in each, and
have endeavoured to throw light on different aspects of the essential
problems of Quantum Physics in order to facilitate a grasp of their
importance. On comparing the different chapters the reader will observe
that, while overlapping, they also complement one another and he will
feel the fascination and greatness inherent in the vast structure of
modern Physics. And while admiring the vast number and the extreme
delicacy of experimental facts which laboratory physicists have
succeeded in revealing, and the strange and brilliant concepts devised
by theorists to explain them, he will appreciate to what a degree the
methods and ideas of physicists have grown in subtlety during recent
years, and how great has been the progress from the somewhat ingenuous
Realism and the over-simplified Mechanics of earlier thinkers. The more
deeply we descend into the minutest structures of Matter, the more
clearly we see that the concepts evolved by the mind in the course of
everyday experience especially those of Time and Space must fail us in
an endeavour to describe the new worlds which we are entering. One feels
tempted to say that the outlines of our concepts must undergo a
progressive blurring, in order that they may retain some semblance of
relevance to the realities of the subatomic scales. Time and Space, in
other words, are too loose a dress for the elementary entities
individuality becomes attenuated in the mysterious pro cesses of
interaction, and even Determinism, the darling of an older generation of
physicists, is forced to yield...
