ABSTRACT
One convenient way of dividing up the investigations that make up the philosophy of physics could be the following: Analytical and historical studies of the development and structure of the leading concepts used in the science of physics, such as ‘space–time’, ‘simultaneity’ and ‘charge’, Naturalistic and formal studies of the methodologies that have been characteristic of physical science, including experimentation and theory-construction, assessment and change and Studies of the foundational principles of significant examples of physical theory. It is worth emphasizing the antiquity of philosophical investigations of the science of physics. Relativity theory challenges the idea that there is a privileged reference frame, absolutely at rest, to which all motions uniform or accelerating could be referred. From the earliest days of mathematical astronomy, the nature of physical theory has been a matter of perennial dispute. The indeterminacy of subatomic processes that had first appeared in experiments with electrons was eventually canonized rather than resolved in mathematical theory of quantum mechanics.
