The Physical Sciences
With increased accessibility to and elaboration upon advanced analytical techniques in the 19th century, physics was defined as much, if not more, by those techniques than by the search for universal principles of motion and energy, and the fundamental nature of matter. Fields such as acoustics, geophysics, astrophysics, aerodynamics, plasma physics, low-temperature physics, and solid-state physics joined optics, fluid dynamics, electromagnetism, and mechanics as areas of physical research. In the 20th century, physics also became closely allied with such fields as electrical, aerospace, and materials engineering, and physicists began to work in government and industrial laboratories as much as in academic settings. Following World War II, the population of physicists increased dramatically, and came to be centered on the United States, while, in more recent decades, physics has become a more international pursuit than at any time in its previous history.
Read more about this topic: History Of Physics
Famous quotes containing the words physical and/or sciences:
“The entire construct of the “medical model” of “mental illness”Mwhat is it but an analogy? Between physical medicine and psychiatry: the mind is said to be subject to disease in the same manner as the body. But whereas in physical medicine there are verifiable physiological proofs—in damaged or affected tissue, bacteria, inflammation, cellular irregularity—in mental illness alleged socially unacceptable behavior is taken as a symptom, even as proof, of pathology.”
—Kate Millett (b. 1934)
“The great end of all human industry is the attainment of happiness. For this were arts invented, sciences cultivated, laws ordained, and societies modelled, by the most profound wisdom of patriots and legislators. Even the lonely savage, who lies exposed to the inclemency of the elements and the fury of wild beasts, forgets not, for a moment, this grand object of his being.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)