Pierre Duhem’s philosophy and history of science

LEITE (Fábio Rodrigo) – STOFFEL (Jean-François), Introduction (pp. 3-6). BARRA (Eduardo Salles de O.) – SANTOS (Ricardo Batista dos), Duhem’s analysis of Newtonian method and the logical priority of physics over metaphysics (pp. 7-19). BORDONI (Stefano), The French roots of Duhem’s early historiography and epistemology (pp. 20-35). CHIAPPIN (José R. N.) – LARANJEIRAS (Cássio Costa), Duhem’s critical analysis of mecha­ni­cism and his defense of a formal conception of theoretical phy­sics (pp. 36-53). GUEGUEN (Marie) – PSILLOS (Stathis), Anti-­scepticism and epistemic humility in Pierre Duhem’s philosophy of science (pp. 54-72). LISTON (Michael), Duhem : images of science, historical continuity, and the first crisis in physics (pp. 73-84). MAIOCCHI (Roberto), Duhem in pre-war Italian philos­ophy : the reasons of an absence (pp. 85-92). HERNÁNDEZ MÁRQUEZ (Víctor Manuel), Was Pierre Duhem an «esprit de finesse» ? (pp. 93-107). NEEDHAM (Paul), Was Duhem justified in not distinguishing between physical and chemical atomism ? (pp. 108-111). OLGUIN (Roberto Estrada), «Bon sens» and «noûs» (pp. 112-126). OLIVEIRA (Amelia J.), Duhem’s legacy for the change in the historiography of science : An analysis based on Kuhn’s writings (pp. 127-139). PRÍNCIPE (João), Poincaré and Duhem : Resonances in their first epistemological reflec­tions (pp. 140-156). MONDRAGON (Damián Islas), Book review of «Pierre Duhem : entre física y metafísica» (pp. 157-159). STOFFEL (Jean-François), Book review of P. Duhem : «La théorie physique : son objet, sa structure» / edit. by S. Roux (pp. 160-162). STOFFEL (Jean-François), Book review of St. Bordoni : «When historiography met epistemology» (pp. 163-165)

Estudio sobre convergencia y dinámica de los métodos de Newton, Stirling y alto orden

Las matemáticas, desde el origen de esta ciencia, han estado al servicio de la sociedad tratando de dar respuesta a los problemas que surgían. Hoy en día sigue siendo así, el desarrollo de las matemáticas está ligado a la demanda de otras ciencias que necesitan dar solución a situaciones concretas y reales. La mayoría de los problemas de ciencia e ingeniería no pueden resolverse usando ecuaciones lineales, es por tanto que hay que recurrir a las ecuaciones no lineales para modelizar dichos problemas (Amat, 2008; véase también Argyros y Magreñán, 2017, 2018), entre otros. El conflicto que presentan las ecuaciones no lineales es que solo en unos pocos casos es posible encontrar una solución única, por tanto, en la mayor parte de los casos, para resolverlas hay que recurrir a los métodos iterativos. Los métodos iterativos generan, a partir de un punto inicial, una sucesión que puede converger o no a la solución

Numerical modelling of tidal flows in the Arabian gulf

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.The main purpose of this thesis is the prediction of tidal movements in the Gulf, which are essential factors for shipping, fishing, and coast protection. The search for suitable predictions of tide propagation and flow problems has undergone a great advance with the arrival of the digital computer. The development of numerical methods permits the formulation of different efficient hydrodynamic models to compute every tide phenomenon with precision and to handle a great amount of information. A two dimensional hydrodynamic model for tidal flow in the Arabian Gulf is developed. The basic hydrodynamic equations are solved with an explicit finite difference method using a staggered grid to reproduce the various tidal constituents in the Arabian Gulf Tidal forcing term at the open boundary (Strait of Harmouz) is approximated in a novel way. A detailed discussion is presented on the treatment of open and closed boundaries. Simulations have been made over several representative tidal cycles using this finite difference model, and the results compare favourably with existing data in different locations in the Arabian Gulf. Contour diagrams for amplitudes and phases are presented for the four dominant constituents M2 (principal lunar), S2 (principal solar), K, (lunar solar diurinal) and O, (principal lunar diurnal) in the Arabian Gulf. Due to the explicit nature of the finite difference scheme, this hydrodynamic model can be efficiently implemented on parallel as well as serial computers

Poincaré and the Three Body Problem

The purpose of the thesis is to present an account of Henri Poincare's famous memoir on the three body problem, the final version of which was published in Acta Mathematica in 1890 as the prize-winning entry in King Oscar II's 60th birthday competition. The memoir is reknowned both for its role in providing the foundations for Poincare's celebrated three volume Méthodes Nouvelles de la Mécanique Céleste, and for containing the first mathematical description of chaotic behaviour in a dynamical system. A historical context is provided both through consideration of the problem itself and through a discussion of Poincaré's earlier work which relates to the mathematics developed in the memoir. The organisation of the Oscar competition, which was undertaken by Gösta Mittag-Leffler, is also described. This not only provides an insight into the late 19th century European mathematical community but also reveals that after the prize had been awarded Poincare found an important error in his work and substantially revised the memoir prior to its publication in Acta. The discovery of a printed version of the original memoir personally annotated by Poincaré has allowed for a detailed comparative study of the mathematics contained in both versions of the memoir. The error is explained and it is shown that it was only as a result of its correction that Poincaré discovered the chaotic behaviour now associated with the memoir. The contemporary reception of the memoir is discussed and Poincaré's subsequent work in celestial mechanics and related topics is examined. Through the consideration of sources up to 1920 the influence and impact of the memoir on the progress of the three body problem and on dynamics in general is assessed

Safety criteria for aperiodic dynamical systems

The use of dynamical system models is commonplace in many areas of science and engineering. One is often interested in whether the attracting solutions in these models are robust to perturbations of the equations of motion. This question is extremely important in situations where it is undesirable to have a large response to perturbations for reasons of safety. An especially interesting case occurs when the perturbations are aperiodic and their exact form is unknown. Unfortunately, there is a lack of theory in the literature that deals with this situation. It would be extremely useful to have a practical technique that provides an upper bound on the size of the response for an arbitrary perturbation of given size. Estimates of this form would allow the simple determination of safety criteria that guarantee the response falls within some pre-specified safety limits. An excellent area of application for this technique would be engineering systems. Here one is frequently faced with the problem of obtaining safety criteria for systems that in operational use are subject to unknown, aperiodic perturbations. In this thesis I show that such safety criteria are easy to obtain by using the concept of persistence of hyperbolicity. This persistence result is well known in the theory of dynamical systems. The formulation I give is functional analytic in nature and this has the advantage that it is easy to generalise and is especially suited to the problem of unknown, aperiodic perturbations. The proof I give of the persistence theorem provides a technique for obtaining the safety estimates we want and the main part of this thesis is an investigation into how this can be practically done. The usefulness of the technique is illustrated through two example systems, both of which are forced oscillators. Firstly, I consider the case where the unforced oscillator has an asymptotically stable equilibrium. A good application of this is the problem of ship stability. The model is called the escape equation and has been argued to capture the relevant dynamics of a ship at sea. The problem is to find practical criteria that guarantee the ship does not capsize or go through large motions when there are external influences like wind and waves. I show how to provide good criteria which ensure a safe response when the external forcing is an arbitrary, bounded function of time. I also consider in some detail the phased-locked loop. This is a periodically forced oscillator which has an attracting periodic solution that is synchronised (or phase-locked) with the external forcing. It is interesting to consider the effect of small aperiodic variations in the external forcing. For hyperbolic solutions I show that the phase-locking persists and I give a method by which one can find an upperbound on the maximum size of the response

Extreme sea levels around the coast of Southern Africa

Bibliography: pages 96-100.Tide gauge data from ten ports around the coast of Southern Africa are used to study the nature and behaviour of extreme high sea levels with a view towards predicting the likelihood of extremes occurring in the future. A recorded sea level height can be thought of as a combination of an astronomical tide and a weather determined component. In Southern Africa tides are typically 2 to 2.5 metres in range and the non-tidal residual accounts for up to 50 cm. Sea level is governed by local tides and local meteorology and there is great similarity in the magnitudes and timing at all ports. However tides are found to be the dominant contribution to extreme levels, hence the long term character of tidal variations is important in Southern African extremes. The fortnightly, equinoctial and 4.4 year tidal cycles determine the expected sea level extremes. A prediction technique developed here makes use of the tidal dominance by calculating the likelihood of exceedance for a specific month in a particular year. For any month the highest tide is known and an extreme will depend on the necessary surge occurring. Probability is derived from the surge distribution for that month, carried out for each month in a year, and the results presented as an exceedance chart