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The Logical Inconsistency of the Old Quantum Theory of Black Body Radiation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

John Norton
John Norton*
Affiliation:
Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh
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Abstract

The old quantum theory of black body radiation was manifestly logically inconsistent. It required the energies of electric resonators to be both quantized and continuous. To show that this manifest inconsistency was inessential to the theory's recovery of the Planck distribution law, I extract a subtheory free of this manifest inconsistency but from which Planck's law still follows.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 54 , Issue 3 , September 1987 , pp. 327 - 350
Copyright
Copyright © 1987 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

I wish to thank John Forge, Allan Franklin, Clark Glymour, Nicholas Rescher, and Joel Smith for helpful discussion.

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