Professor Stein is examining the development of fundamental concepts of physics, with a view both to the clarification of general philosophical questions concerning scientific theories, and to promote understanding of the origins and the content of basic notions and principles of physics. This study is the first of a series of such studies in this area to be undertaken by the principal investigator. This part of the series will treat not the chronologically earliest period envisaged, but the central one: roughly the period in which the basic concepts of modern mechanics and the theory of gravitation were created and the beginnings of physical optics were elaborated. These conceptual developments in modern physics coincided with the emergence of a "new philosophy" of nature, variously represented by the work of Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Huygens, Newton, Leibniz, Locke and others. Besides this central period of interest in which he examines the fundamental concepts of mechanics, gravitation and optics, Professor Stein will also be examining earlier materials on the development of astronomical theories and the later transformations of classical physics by the theories of relativity and quantum mechanics.
