Don Howard and Sebastián Murgueitio Ramírez have just put online the complete issues of Lettres épistémologiques, a small journal dedicated to the foundations of physics published from 1973 to 1984 by the Institut de la Méthode in Bienne, Switzerland.

In 1973 Samuel Goudsmit, the editor-in-chief of the Physical Review wrote an editorial discouraging articles on “fundamental aspect of theoretical physics”. Those articles, Goudsmit claimed, were single out by the “paucity of mathematics as compared to wordage”.

More about the background of Goudsmit’s July 1973 editorial can be found here.

Apparently, people frustrated by this “shut up and calculate”” policy started the”Epistemologica Letters.”

More information about the journal can be found in the “Introduction” written by Howard and Ramírez.

The story of how a nearly complete collections of the issues of the Lettres épistémologiques has been rediscovered in Howard’s basement can be found here.