On the methods of theoretical physics (materials for epistemological studies of "Boltzmann's theory of reflection" and modeling theory)

The reason for the lack of attention to Boltzmann's philosophical views on the part of specialists from English-speaking and Asian countries is the unavailability of translations of his works into the corresponding dialect languages. This terrible state of affairs leads to the fact that Boltzmann’s philosophical views, which are of fundamental importance for physics and epistemology, are distorted or vulgarly simplified. For the first time, we provide a complete translation from German of a number of passages from the popular works of Ludwig Boltzmann, which were repeatedly cited from secondary sources by philosophers in the 20th century and simplified the interpretation of Boltzmann’s philosophical views to the point of completely losing the essence and meaning. We show how complete and heuristically valuable Ludwig Boltzmann's original approach was, lost as a result of these omissions and reinterpretations.