‘God is groot en wij begrijpen Hem niet’: Kaisers populaire sterrenkunde en het einde van de fysiko-theologie

Frederik Kaiser, popular astronomy, and the decline of natural theologyThroughout his remarkable career the Leiden astronomer Frederik Kaiser (1808-1872) struggled to revive Dutch astronomy, which at the time was rather moribund. His efforts comprised mobilizing public support through popularization. In spite of a lack of illustrations, his popular Starry Sky (1844) proved immensely successful with the general public. This work differed in many respects from earlier Dutch popular writings, and helped to establish the new genre of popular science. Kaiser enunciated his idiosyncratic views on popularization in a lecture which he later published as a brochure. Whereas his research reflects the shift from the dilettante to the professional scientist in being focussed on precision measurement, his popular work likewise testified to the transition from natural philosophy to modern science. Charged with the task of composing a natural theological work on astronomy, the deeply religious Kaiser, wriggled his way through the text. Feeling unable to advance the usual arguments, he finally found refuge in the book of Job: 'Behold, God is great and we know him not'. Arguably, the rise of popular science and the decline of natural theology were intimately connected

Het geheim van het heelal: fictie, filosofie en fysica

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Het ontstaan van het systeem van bètadisciplines: de natuurkunde

The emergence of the system of scientific disciplines: the case of physics This essay aims to contribute to a better understanding of the emergence of academic disciplines in the course of the nineteenth century. Being largely based upon Rudolf Stichweh’s 1984-exemplary study Zur Entstehung des modernen Systems wissenschaftlicher Disziplinen. Physik in Deutschland 1740–1890, this essay takes an academic discipline to comprise a well-defined body of knowledge, a corresponding field of research, a set of institutions and a community of representatives, who owe their access to this community to expert skills acquired through an academic education. It describes the emergence of these different facets in the case of physics. This process involved the gradual emergence of a clear demarcation with respect to bordering fields like chemistry and mathematics, the rise of vocational training at the universities, the emergence of specialized journals and of disciplinary communities. Seen from this perspective and in contrast to the received view the modern system of academic disciplines only emerged in the second half – or rather, the last third – of the nineteenth century

Measurement of the Charged Pion Electromagnetic Form Factor

Separated longitudinal and transverse structure functions for the reaction 1H(e,eprime pi+)n were measured in the momentum transfer region Q2=0.6-1.6 (GeV/c)**2 at a value of the invariant mass W=1.95 GeV. New values for the pion charge form factor were extracted from the longitudinal cross section by using a recently developed Regge model. The results indicate that the pion form factor in this region is larger than previously assumed and is consistent with a monopole parameterization fitted to very low Q2 elastic data.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure