Arthur Mihram
G. Arthur Mihram | |
|---|---|
| Residence | New Jersey, United States |
| Nationality | American |
| Known for | Historical critiques of relativity |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Physics, simulation and modelling |
G. Arthur Mihram (George Arthur Mihram, born 1939) is an American mathematical scientist known for his work on the statistical foundations of simulation and modelling and, in his later writing, for critical, history-of-science examinations of Einstein's relativity theories. Much of his scholarly work on the nature and history of scientific models was produced in collaboration with his frequent co-author Danielle Mihram.
Biography
Mihram was born in 1939. He was affiliated with the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, where he carried out his foundational work on simulation methodology. Over his career he wrote extensively on the philosophy and history of science, often jointly with Danielle Mihram, a librarian and scholar at the University of Southern California. Together they presented and published on such topics as the role of models, metaphors and analogy in human knowledge, the etymology of "cybernetics," and the relationship between mathematics and the physical world.
Scientific work
Mihram's best-known scholarly contribution is in the field of simulation. His book Simulation: Statistical Foundations and Methodology (Academic Press, 1972) became an influential text, treating computer simulation as a rigorous statistical and experimental discipline and addressing questions of experimental design, variance reduction, and the credibility and validation of simulation models. He published numerous related papers, and with Danielle Mihram wrote on the historical and epistemological status of scientific models, arguing that models function as metaphors and analogies through which scientists represent the physical world.
This concern with how models and paradigms structure scientific knowledge carried over into his engagement with modern physics. In his 1995 study "Relativity Theories Rejected: Historical Perspective," he set Einstein's special and general theories of relativity within a longer history of scientific ideas and argued, from that historical and epistemological standpoint, that the relativity theories should be rejected. Consistent with his broader view of theories as models subject to critical scrutiny, he framed relativity as a paradigm to be assessed against the history of physics rather than accepted as settled.
Selected publications
- 1972 - Simulation: Statistical Foundations and Methodology
- 1995 - "Relativity Theories Rejected: Historical Perspective"