{"quotes":[{"text":"But some numbers, called dimensionless numbers, have the same numerical value no matter what units of measurement are chosen. Probably the most famous of these is the 'fine-structure constant,' .... Physicists love this number not just because it is dimensionless, but also because it is a combination of three fundamental constants of nature.","author":"John Archibald Wheeler","tags":["fine-structure-constant","history-of-science","physics"],"id":9110,"author_id":"John+Archibald+Wheeler"},{"text":"In a way, the Phi Triangle of the Golden Mean could be compared to the path of light sent forth from the great All-Seeing Eye of God in the beginning, and which paved the way for the creation of the Universe.","author":"William Eisen","tags":["divine-proportion","golden-mean","golden-ratio","history-of-mathematics","history-of-science","light","phi","universe"],"id":27874,"author_id":"William+Eisen"},{"text":"The strength of the familiar electromagnetic force between two electrons, for example, is expressed in physics in terms of a constant known as the fine structure constant. The value of this constant, almost exactly 1/137, has puzzled many generations of physicists. A joke made about the famous English physicist Paul Dirac (1902-1984), one of the founders of quantum mechanics, says that upon arrival to heaven he was allowed to ask God one question. His question was: 'Why 1/137?","author":"Mario Livio","tags":["fine-structure-constant","heaven","history-of-science","physics","quantum-mechanics"],"id":38947,"author_id":"Mario+Livio"},{"text":"Science does nothing for man spiritually, and organized religion demands blind faith in illogical liturgy that was never meant to be taken literally!","author":"Fred Van Lente","tags":["history-of-philosophy","history-of-science","logic","philosophy","religion","science","spirtiuality"],"id":39038,"author_id":"Fred+Van+Lente"},{"text":"Two writings of al-Hassār have survived. The first, entitled Kitāb al-bayān wa t-tadhkār [Book of proof and recall] is a handbook of calculation treating numeration, arithmetical operations on whole numbers and on fractions, extraction of the exact or approximate square root of a whole of fractionary number and summation of progressions of whole numbers (natural, even or odd), and of their squares and cubes. Despite its classical content in relation to the Arab mathematical tradition, this book occupies a certain important place in the history of mathematics in North Africa for three reasons: in the first place, and notwithstanding the development of research, this manual remains the most ancient work of calculation representing simultaneously the tradition of the Maghrib and that of Muslim Spain. In the second place, this book is the first wherein one has found a symbolic writing of fractions, which utilises the horizontal bar and the dust ciphers I.E. The ancestors of the digits that we use today (and which are, for certain among them, almost identical to ours) [Woepcke 1858-59: 264-75; Zoubeidi 1996]. It seems as a matter of fact that the utilisation of the fraction bar was very quickly generalised in the mathematical teaching in the Maghrib, which could explain that Fibonacci (d. After 1240) had used in his Liber Abbaci, without making any particular remark about it [Djebbar 1980 : 97-99; Vogel 1970-80]. Thirdly, this handbook is the only Maghribian work of calculation known to have circulated in the scientific foyers of south Europe, as Moses Ibn Tibbon realised, in 1271, a Hebrew translation.[Mathematics in the Medieval Maghrib: General Survey on Mathematical Activities in North Africa].","author":"Ahmed Djebbar","tags":["calculus","fibonacci","fractions","history-of-science","mathematicians","mathematics"],"id":64500,"author_id":"Ahmed+Djebbar"},{"text":"The unsolved problems of the physical world now seem even more formidable than those solved in the twentieth century. Though in application it works splendidly, we do not even understand the physical meaning of quantum mechanics, much less how it might be united with general relativity.We don't know why the dimensionless constants (ratios of masses of elementary particles, ratios of strength of gravitational to electric forces, fine structure constant, etc.) have the values they do, unless we appeal to the implausible anthropic principle, which seems like a regression to Aristotelian teleology.","author":"Gerald Holton","tags":["anthropic-principle","constants-of-nature","fine-structure-constant","history-of-science","physics"],"id":83827,"author_id":"Gerald+Holton"},{"text":"To calculate 'the' fine structure constant, 1/137, we would need a realistic model of just about everything, and this we do not have. In this talk I want to return to the old question of what it is that determines gauge couplings in general, and try to prepare the ground for a future realistic calculation.","author":"Steven Weinberg","tags":["fine-structure-constant","history-of-science","mathematics","physics","theory-of-everything"],"id":98964,"author_id":"Steven+Weinberg"},{"text":"In his first philosophical lecture on modern physics that Pauli gave in November 1934 to the Zurich Philosophical Society he said that only a formulation of quantum theory would be satisfactory which expresses the relation between the value of [the fine structure constant] and charge conservation in the same complementary was as that between the space-time description and energy-momentum conservation.","author":"Charles P. Enz","tags":["charge-conservation","fine-structure-constant","history-of-science","physics","quantum-theory","wolfgang-pauli"],"id":133590,"author_id":"Charles+P.+Enz"},{"text":"Following the path of earlier unificationists, one of Eddington's aims was to reduce the contingencies in the description of nature, for example, by explaining the fundamental constants of physics rather than accepting them as merely experimental data. One of these constants was the fine-structure constant ..., which entered prominently in Dirac's theory and was known to be about 1/137.","author":"Helge Kragh","tags":["eddington","fine-structure-constant","history-of-science","physics"],"id":137793,"author_id":"Helge+Kragh"},{"text":"Plato, Socrates, Aristotle and many more great minds laid the groundwork for the development of modern science. Over the foundation of philosophy, history witnessed the daring ventures of human excellence by both philosophical and scientific geniuses, such as Leonardo-da-Vinci, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Bacon, Darwin, Newton and so on. And the chain of reaction they triggered with their extraordinarily abnormal thinking, given their surrounding ignorance and fundamentalism, resulted into the evolution of our modern science.","author":"Abhijit Naskar","tags":["history-of-mankind","history-of-philosophy","history-of-science","philosophy","philosophy-and-science","philosophy-of-science","science"],"id":140291,"author_id":"Abhijit+Naskar"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":39,"pages":4,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}