Book contents
- The Cosmic Microwave Background
- The Cosmic Microwave Background
- Copyright page
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Physical cosmology: A brief introduction
- 1 Physical cosmology from Einstein to 1965
- 2 The “great controversy” (1948–1965) and epistemological issues it raised
- 3 Hot Big Bang and λCDM
- Part II Discovery of the CMB and current cosmological orthodoxy
- Part III What constitutes an unorthodoxy? An epistemological framework of cosmology
- Part IV Moderate unorthodoxies: The CMB with the Big Bang
- Part V Radical unorthodoxies: The CMB without the Big Bang
- Part VI Formation of the orthodoxy and the alternatives: Epistemological lessons
- Part VII Other philosophically relevant aspects of the CMB
- Book part
- Notes
- References
- Index
1 - Physical cosmology from Einstein to 1965
from Part I - Physical cosmology: A brief introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 July 2024
- The Cosmic Microwave Background
- The Cosmic Microwave Background
- Copyright page
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Physical cosmology: A brief introduction
- 1 Physical cosmology from Einstein to 1965
- 2 The “great controversy” (1948–1965) and epistemological issues it raised
- 3 Hot Big Bang and λCDM
- Part II Discovery of the CMB and current cosmological orthodoxy
- Part III What constitutes an unorthodoxy? An epistemological framework of cosmology
- Part IV Moderate unorthodoxies: The CMB with the Big Bang
- Part V Radical unorthodoxies: The CMB without the Big Bang
- Part VI Formation of the orthodoxy and the alternatives: Epistemological lessons
- Part VII Other philosophically relevant aspects of the CMB
- Book part
- Notes
- References
- Index
Summary
The chapter provides a brief overview of the first three major eras, out of four, in the development of cosmology. The first era started with “prehistory” of cosmology in antiquity, continued with the major contributions of Newton and the nineteenth-century debates on thermodynamics conditions at the cosmic scale, and ended with a “quantum leap” in relevant observational capacities at the beginning of the twentieth century. The second era saw cosmology develop as a mathematical game of sorts, rather than a physical theory predicated on Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. It was marked by Einstein’s static model of the universe and a static model by De Sitter. A cosmological revolution began in the third era (from 1929 to 1948), with the development of expanding models of the universe that captured its physical dynamics.
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- The Cosmic Microwave BackgroundHistorical and Philosophical Lessons, pp. 7 - 8Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024