Dějiny věd a techniky, No. 1, Vol. XLVI (2013)

PAPERS

DVT 131, 3
Historická, filosofická a fyzikální reflexe Bohrova převratného pojednání z roku 1913
Filip Grygar

Historical, philosophical and physical reflection of Bohr’s revolutionary step in 1913.
The article summarizes from the historical, philosophical, and physical point of view the context and basis that led to Bohr´s unorthodox way of thinking and his breakthrough approach to solving physical problems. His three core articles “On the constitution of atoms and molecules” from 1913 represented revolutionary work, unusual both for their style linking contradictory ideas and for their generality and interdisciplinary complexity.

Key words: Niels Bohr · Ernest Rutherford · Planck constant · quantum hypothesis · spectral lines · models of atom

Summary: This paper gives an account from historical, philosophical and physical points of view of the context and basis that led Bohr since his college years to engage in unorthodox ways of thinking and to develop a breakthrough approach to solving physical questions. Since his early work, Bohr strove throughout his life to comprehend all within the framework of the importance of life, universality, and interdisciplinary complexity. First, he carefully analyzed the previous understanding of existing assumptions of the phenomena he examined, and only then did he work out the elaboration and solution. Among other things, applying Planck’s quantum hypothesis to the Rutherford atom model and putting together Planck’s constant and the Balmer-Rydberg constant enabled Bohr to explain both the stability of electrons in atoms and the line spectrum of hydrogen or any atoms. This article further summarizes concepts of atomic structure preceding Bohr’s revolutionary model of the atom.


DVT 131, 27
Monstra a hranice organizace
Lucie Šarkadyová

Monsters and limits of organization.
This paper attempts to introduce the problem of monsters as presented by Georges Canguilhem in his book La connaissance de la vie. The first part of the article is concerned with the book itself, especially with the part called “La monstruosité et le monstreux.” The second part of the article takes up the point with which the first part ended, primarily Claude Bernard and the connection between the question of the monsters and the notion of organization, which both allows and individualizes the life of living organisms. A monster is described as a creature that defies life, that is, as a contrapunct of life, which thus denies the duality of life and death as something that is mutually circumscribed and determined. The notion of “non-viability” is of great importance as a notion that can describe monsters and that is understood as an immanent impossibility of self-realization.

Key words: monster · norms · order · organization · organism · French philosophy · French epistemology · philosophy of biology · teratology

Summary: The article is divided in two parts. The first part focuses on the theme of monsters as creatures that defy the order promoted by life. By doing so, monsters can draw attention to this order and/or its norms. Monsters are examined and subsequently artificially created by the teratologists. It seems that by their artificial creation, teratology points out monsters’ undue presence in living nature. This opposition to the viability of life is connected with monsters’ impossibility to be organized in any livable way. By this way, the first part of the article, which is concerned with monsters, is connected with the second part, which focuses on Claude Bernard. Monsters are deprived of the basic possibility of self-realization and creation through the organization, as described by Claude Bernard. Thus, monsters indicate the limits of the possibility of livability as such. Based on this framework, it is obvious that the self-realization of an organism is not possible without compliance to order and self-creating norms.

COMMUNICATION

DVT 131, 38
Dějiny nejstarších fází řeckého jazyka a příspěvek Antonína Bartoňka k jejich zkoumání II. Svědectví nápisů psaných starořeckými dialekty
Alena Hadravová

The History of Ancient Greek Language and the Contribution of Antonín Bartoněk to its Study II. The Testimony of the Inscriptions Written in Ancient Greek Dialects.
The linguistic work of Antonín Bartoněk has influenced the world history of studies on classical languages for a long time. His new Czech monograph Chréstomatie starořeckých nářečních nápisů (Chrestomathy of Ancient Greek Dialect Inscriptions. Brno, Masaryk University, 2011) is briefly reviewed here as a supplement to the review published in DVT 43, 2011, pp. 26–32.

Key words: classical philology · ancient Greek language · ancient Greek epigraphy · ancient Greek dialectology

Summary: A new Czech monograph, Chréstomatie starořeckých nářečních nápisů (Chrestomathy of Ancient Greek Dialect Inscriptions . Brno, Masaryk University, 2011), by the leading Czech classical philologist and mycenologist Antonín Bartoněk is a very desired and important part of the author’s project dealing with the old Greek dialectology (cf. his Dialekty klasické řečtiny – Dialects of the Classical Greek Language. Brno, Masaryk University, 2009, reviewed in DVT 43, 2011, pp. 26–32). This valuable anthology of 173 ancient Greek dialect inscriptions, supplemented by the linguistic characteristics of the main features of the language, is briefly described.


DVT 131, 44
Zapomenutý objev z počátků televize. Střípky ze života a díla Jana Szczepanika, zvaného polský Edison
Vít Šmerha

A forgotten invention from the early days of television. Fragments from the life and work of Jan Szczepanik, aka the Polish Edison.
The article deals with a forgotten invention of the so-called telectroscope and additional inventions of Jan Szczepanik. The author of a forgotten telectroscope (an electrical device designed to transmit video images and sound at a longer distance) was Polish inventor Jan Szczepanik. According to a Czech physicist Jaroslav Šafránek (1890–1957), the telectroscope method is among the methods using selenium to record and reproduce luminous images – an element whose electrical resistance changes depending on the frequency and intensity of the impacting light. Szczepanik followed up on the work of a German physicist Paul Nipkow, holder of the so-called Nipkow disk patent.

Key words: telectroscope · television · inventions · colour film and photography · weaving

Summary: Szczepanik was considered among the pioneers in the colour film and photography field. He engineered a camera, by means of which he captured a surgery taking place at a hospital in the so-called Langenbeck VirchowHaus on Luisenstraße, Berlin. He also made a “Jungfraujoch” movie presenting the images of a glacial landscape. Sczcepancik proved his versatility by introducing a novel method in weaving – he simplified weaving operations by using photography to develop fabric designs. He also designed armour to protect from bullets – a sort of bullet-proof jacket. Szczepanik’s significant collaborator was Lewis Kleinberg, a banker and entrepreneur in the photographic industry from Lviv. Together with Szczepanik, Kleinberg was the holder of several patents. The two of them founded a company called “Société des Inventions Jan Szczepanik & Cie.” in Vienna in 1898. The first ardent admirer of Jan Szczepanik’s inventions was the American writer Mark Twain, who wrote two short essays published in the The Century magazine and in the London Times after he had met Szczepanik in person in Vienna.



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