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sanraj
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Library of Congress Control | ISBN 978-1-4020-5539-3 | Pages: 299 | English | PDF | Size: 3.97 MB
Preface
A leading representative of ?uid dynamics de?ned this discipline as “part of applied mathematics, of physics, of many branches of engineering, certainly civil, mechanical, chemical, and aeronautical engineering, and of naval architecture and geophysics, with astrophysics and biological and physiological ?uid dynamics to be added.” [1, p. 4] Fluid mechanics has not always been as versatile as this de?nition suggests. Fifty years ago, astrophysical, biological, and physiological ?uid dynamics was still in the future. A hundred years ago, aeronautical engineering did not yet exist; when the ?rst airplanes appeared in the sky before the First World War, the science that became known as aerodynamics was still in its infancy. By the end of the 19th century, ?uid mechanics meant hydrodynamics or hydraulics: the former usually dealt with the aspects of “ideal,” i.e., frictionless, ?uids, based on Euler’s equations of motion; the latter was concerned with the real ?ow of water in pipes and canals. Hydrodynamics
belong d to the domain of mathematics and theoretical physics; hydraulics, by contrast, was a technology based on empirical rules rather than scienti?c principles. Theoretical hydrodynamics and practical hydraulics pursued their own diverging courses; therewas only a minimal overlap, and when applied to speci?c problems, the results could contradict one another [2]. This book is concerned with the history of ?uid dynamics in the twentieth century before the Second World War. This was the era when ?uid dynamics evolved into a powerful engineering science. A future study will account for the subsequent period, when this discipline acquired the multifaceted character to which the above quote alluded. The crucial era for bridging the proverbial gap between theory and practice, however, was the earlier period, i.e., the ?rst four decades of the twentieth century. We may call these decades the age of Prandtl, because no other individual contributed more to the formation of modern ?uid dynamics. We may even pinpoint the year and the event with which this process began: it started in 1904, when Ludwig Prandtl presented at a conference the boundary layer theory for ?uids with little friction. Prandtl’s publication was regarded as “one of the most extraordinary papers of this century, and probably of many centuries” [1]—it “marked an epoch in the history of ?uid mechanics, opening the way for understanding the motion of real ?uids” [3]. In order to avoid any misunderstanding: this is not a biography of Prandtl, however desirable an account of Prandtl’s life might be. Nor is it a hero story; I do not claim that the emergence of modern ?uid dynamics is due solely to Prandtl. If Prandtl and his Göttingen circle’s work is pursued here in more detail than that of other key ?gures of this discipline, it is because the narrative needs a thread to link its parts, and Prandtl’s contributions provide enough coherence for this purpose. The history of ?uid dynamics in the age of Prandtl, as presented in the following account, is
particularly a narrative about how science and technology interacted with another in the twentieth century. How does one account for such a complex process? In contrast to sociological approaches I pursue the history of ?uid dynamics not within a theoretical model of science–technology interactions. Nevertheless, the relationship of theory and practice, science and engineering, or whatever rhetoric is used to refer to these antagonistic and yet so similar twins, implicitly runs as a recurrent theme through all chapters of this book. I share with philosophers, sociologists, and other analysts of science studies the concern to better grasp science–technology interactions, but I cannot see how to present the history of ?uid dynamics from the perspective of an abstract model. My own approach is descriptive rather than analytical; I approach the history of ?uid dynamics from the perspective of a narrator who is more interested in a rich portrayal of historical contexts than in gathering elements for an
epistemological analysis. This approach requires deviations here and there from the main alley, so to speak, in order to clarify pertinent contexts, but I am conscious not to lose the narrative thread and regard as pertinent only what contributes to a better understanding of the theory–practice issue. I postpone further re?ections to the epilogue, when this issue may be better discussed in view of the empirical material presented throughout the remainder of the book. Many people and institutions have contributed to this work. Instead of acknowledging their help here individually in the form of a long list of names, I refer readers to the notes in the appendix, where readers may better appreciate how archives and authors of other studies helped to add ?esh to the skeleton of my narrative. The only exceptions concern my colleagues from the Deutsches Museum and the Munich Center for the History of Science and Technology, whom I owe thank for years of fruitful collaboration and stimulating discussions, and the
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft for funding the Research Group 393, which formed the framework of this study.
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