阿部良夫の科学史学上の業績とその影響

概要

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Yoshio Abe (1888-1945), who studied and taught physics but later took charge of a press enterprise, published many articles and several books on the history and philosophy of physics during 1915-1940. Among his contributions, noteworthy are the following: (1) critical annotations to Mach's view on physics, in which Abe pointed out that Mach's idea of 'economy of thought' was inadequate to interprete the origin of physical sciences and that Mach's key word 'description' implicated 'explanation' as well, (2) a commentary (1935) on Newton's Principia, in which Abe demonstrated, virtually independent of E. Hoppe, that Newton's 'quantitas materiae' implied the atomistic concept of substance and (3) the full translation with explanatory and historical appendices (1940), in cooperation with N. Hori, of Newton's Opticks, in which Abe put in as many corrections as were necessary for the text (the 4th ed., 1931) available at that time. Besides the above-mentioned, Abe's learning of the buddhistic classics held the attention (in c. 1943) of Hideki Yukawa, the theoretical physicist who was awarded the Nobel prize in 1949, as he attempted to develop his meson theory.
日本科学史学会の論文
1986-08-19