Session C13 - History of Physics.
ORAL session, Saturday afternoon, April 28
Room 12-13, Renaissance Hotel
A number of unorthodox cosmological models were developed in the 1930s, many by British theoreticians. Three of the most notable of these theories included Eddington's cosmonumerology, Milne's cosmophysics, and Dirac's large numbers hypothesis (LNH). Dirac's LNH was based partly on the other two and it has been argued that modern steady-state theories are based partly on Milne's cosmophysics. But what influenced Eddington and Milne? Both were products of the late Victorian education system in Britain and could conceivably have been influenced by Victorian thought which, in addition to its strict (though technically unoffical) social caste system, had a flair for the unusual. Victorianism was filled with a fascination for the occult and the supernatural, and science was not insulated from this trend (witness the Henry Slade trial in 1877). It is conceivable that the normally strict mentality of the scientific process in the minds of Eddington and Milne was affected, indirectly, by this trend for the unusual, possibly pushing them into thinking "outside the box" as it were. In addition, cosmonumerology and the LNH exhibit signs of Pythagorean and Aristotelian thought. It is the aim of this ongoing project at St. Andrews to determine the influences and characterize the relations existing in and within these and related theories.