Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-ttngx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-16T23:32:28.027Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Simple Failure of Curie’s Principle

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Bryan W. Roberts
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

I point out a simple sense in which the standard formulation of Curie’s principle is false when the symmetry transformation it describes is time reversal.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 80 , Issue 4 , October 2013 , pp. 579 - 592
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

For their helpful comments and suggestions I would like to thank John Earman, John D. Norton, and the December 8, 2012, audience at the Southern California Philosophy of Physics Reading Group at the University of California, Irvine.

References

Brading, K., and Castellani, E.. 2003. Symmetries in Physics: Philosophical Reflections. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Curie, P. 1894. “Sur la symétrie dans les phénomènes physique, symétrie d’un champ électrique et d’un champ magnétique.” Journal de Physique Théorique et Appliquée 3:393–415.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Earman, J. 2002. “What Time Reversal Is and Why It Matters.” International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 16 (3): 245–64..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Earman, J. 2004. “Curie’s Principle and Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking.” International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 18 (2–3): 173–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ismael, J. 1997. “Curie’s Principle.” Synthese 110 (2): 167–90..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Messiah, A. 1999. Quantum Mechanics: Two Volumes Bound as One. New York: Dover.Google Scholar
Mittelstaedt, P., and Weingartner, P. A.. 2005. Laws of Nature. Berlin: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sachs, R. G. 1987. The Physics of Time Reversal. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Uhlhorn, U. 1963. “Representation of Symmetry Transformations in Quantum Mechanics.” Arkiv för Fysik 23:307–40.Google Scholar
Varadarajan, V. S. 2007. Geometry of Quantum Theory. New York: Springer Science and Business Media.Google Scholar
Weinberg, S. 1995. The Quantum Theory of Fields. Vol. 1, Foundations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wigner, E. P. 1931/1931. Group Theory and Its Application to the Quantum Mechanics of Atomic Spectra. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar