(1) Lehrbuch der Physik in elementarer Darstellung (2) Fisica Generate e Sperimentale

Abstract

(1) THERE has too often been a tendency in the past among writers of elementary textbooks of physics to present the subject in a fragmentary form, to discuss isolated details with great care but to avoid a discussion of the broad principles, as if this would endanger the sanity of the student by bringing him into contact with philosophy. Prof. Berliner deserves our thanks for defining at the very outset of his well-known textbook the mechanistic basis on which he afterwards builds, and he wisely devotes great attention and considerable space to the underlying principles of mechanics. For him, a physical law is a formula which describes rather than prescribes the behaviour of physical objects. He explains why we find it expedient to seek the ‘forces’ that give rise to observed phenomena and points out the fundamental part played by motions. Although the efforts to obtain a mechanical interpretation of electromagnetic phenomena have failed, a study of mechanics is still as essential to the student physicist as is a study of Bach to the aspiring modern musician.

(1) Lehrbuch der Physik in elementarer Darstellung.

Von Arnold Berliner. Fünfte Auflage. Pp. vii + 736. (Berlin: Julius Springer, 1934.) 19.80 gold marks.

(2) Fisica Generate e Sperimentale.

Per Prof. Eligio Perucca. Vol. 1: Meccanica, Calore. Pp. xvi + 647. 85 lire. Vol. 2: Ottica, Elettricità e Magnetisme. Pp. xv + 870. 110 lire. (Torino: Unione Tipografico-Editrice Torinese, 1932–1934.)