CONTENTS -- PREFACE -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- I. PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE -- Introduction -- Philosophy of Science -- Truth -- Significant Questions in Science -- II. CLASSICAL PRECURSORS FOR THE CONCEPTS OF MODERN PHYSICS -- Galileo Galilei -- The Thought Experiment -- Galileo's Principle of Inertia -- Laws of Motion in Two- and Three-Dimensional Space -- Galileo's Principle of Relativity -- Threads of Truth - Astronomy -- Rene Descartes -- Baruch Spinoza -- Isaac Newton -- Newton's Three Laws of Motion -- Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation -- Newton's Concepts -- Newton's Optics -- III. NINETEENTH CENTURY PHYSICS: ATOMISM AND CONTINUITY -- The Ideal Gas Law -- Heat and the Conservation of Energy -- The Laws of Thermodynamics and Atomism -- Ludwig Boltzmann's and Ernst Mach's Philosophy of Science -- Agreements between Boltzmann and Mach and 'Mach's Principle' -- The Continuous Field Concept -- IV. EARLY ANOMALIES AND ELEMENTARY PARTICLES -- The Perihelion Precession of Mercury's Orbit -- The Michelson-Morley Experiment -- Blackbody Radiation and the Photon -- The Electron -- The Quantization of Electrical Charge -- The Photoelectric Effect -- The Compton Effect -- Radioactivity -- Rutherford and Atomic Structure -- Bohr's Atomic Model -- V. FROM THE OLD QUANTUM THEORY TO QUANTUM MECHANICS -- Bohr's Atom and Energy Levels -- Electron Diffraction and Wave-Particle Dualism -- Schrödinger's Wave Mechanics -- Schrödinger's Interpretation of Wave Mechanics -- The Young Double Slit Experiment -- Einstein's Objection to Born's Interpretation of Linear Superposition -- Schrödinger's Cat Paradox -- VI. QUANTUM MECHANICS: HEISENBERG'S MATRIX MECHANICS AND THE COPENHAGEN SCHOOL -- Heisenberg's Philosophy -- Matrix Mechanics -- The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle -- The Subjectivity of Matter in the Copenhagen View -- The Principle of Complementarity.

Einstein's Photon Box Thought Experiment -- The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Thought Experiment -- Hidden Variables -- VII. CONCEPTS OF THE THEORY OF RELATIVITY -- The Principle of Relativity -- Einstein's Discovery of the Theory of Relativity -- The Spacetime Metric in Special Relativity -- The Light Cone -- Lorentz Transformations -- Relative Simultaneity -- Time Contraction and the Twin Paradox -- The Fitzgerald-Lorentz Contraction -- The Transformations of Velocities in Relativity Theory -- VIII. FROM SPECIAL TO GENERAL RELATIVITY -- The Paradoxes of Time Travel -- The Energy-Mass Relation E = mc2 in Special Relativity -- The Meaning of E = mc2 -- The Theory of General Relativity -- The Metric of a Curved Spacetime -- The Principle of Equivalence -- The Tests of General Relativity -- A Unified Field Theory -- IX. THE UNIVERSE -- Astrophysics -- Black Holes -- Pulsars -- Dark Matter -- Cosmology: The Physics of the Universe -- The Early Friedman Model -- The Hubble Law -- The Beginning of the Universe -- Olbers' Paradox -- A Spiral Universe -- The Separation of Matter and Antimatter in the Universe -- X. CONFLICTS IN THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE QUANTUM AND RELATIVITY THEORIES -- The Principle of Complementarity versus the Principle of Relativity -- Atomism Versus Continuity -- On Epistemology - Logical Positivism Versus Abstract Realism -- Subjectivity Versus Objectivity -- On Quantum Electrodynamics -- Indeterminism Versus Determinism -- REFERENCES AND NOTES -- INDEX.