Aspects of the General Structure of Physics(<Feature Articles>World of Physics General : For the Memory of 90 Years Life of Professor IMAI Isao)

Abstract

Many great physicists write in their later years about what physics is or how physics should be. It is attempted to expose aspects of general structure of physics by quoting passages from their writings. H. Yukawa, in his Lectures on Physics talks about how Newton was led by his belief in the God and the world order. In his What is Physics? S. Tomonaga strived to dig out logic in the historical developments of the theory of heat and the atomistic views. Illustration is given by R. P. Feynman in his Character of Physical Laws of the irreversibility and the role of temperature in terms of a simple machine of ratchet-wheel connected with vanes exposed to gas molecules. I. Imai, in his Introduction to Physics in a New Perspective, discusses how intuitively physics can be built up if conservation laws are taken as the basic principles. The thought is illustrated by a proof that the force on a current in a magnetic field is independent of the magnetic permeability of the conductor carrying the current. Finally, H. Takahashi's approach to General Structure of Physics is exposed with an example of the dispersion relation for general linear response.