Danilo Capecchi - Epistemology and Natural Philosophy in the 18th Century: The Roots of Modern Physics

This bookseries establishes a well-defined forum for Monographs and Proceedings on the History of Mechanism and Machine Science (MMS). The series publishes works that give an overview of the historical developments, from the earliest times up to and including the recent past, of MMS in all its technical aspects.

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At the beginning of the modern era, what is now called science was spread out among various disciplines: theology, handcrafts, magic, alchemy, astrology, medicine, natural philosophy, and mixed mathematics (that is optics, astronomy, mechanics, music, etc). In the 18th century, these disciplines had already broken up and became recomposed into an organization of science of the natural world that was similar to the modern one. The most important transformation was that affecting natural philosophy, which was considered, at least in the academic world, the most noble and by far the most important form of knowledge. It ceased to be a philosophy in the canonical sense, merging with other forms of knowledge and giving raise to disciplines such as physics, natural history, chemistry, medicine, and engineering, names which, while not initially fully shared, were established in the 19th century and are still used today. The new philosophers of nature were no longer canonical philosophers, although they continued to think about philosophy. They were rather mathematicians in the broad sense, namely, scholars who were interested in more than just pure mathematics. In some cases, this is particularly true for the new branches of physics such as electricity and magnetism, and they were also simply educated gentlemen, gifted with intelligence and curiosity.

The present book aims to document this process of transformation, concentrating on the 18th century, a century that in the past had been considered uninteresting for the history of science. It would represent the transition from the age of genius and the birth of modern science, in the 17th century, to the age of prodigious development, in the 19th century. This view does not stand up to thorough analysis. The 18th century, the century of Enlightenment and reason, as will be clear from the present book, was rather a century of great ferment and novelty.

To make the narrative practicable for a single individual, no great emphasis has been placed on the precise genesis of the various concepts and methods developed in scientific enterprises, except when this was necessary to make them clear. I have been content to take snapshots of situations by taking a look at discrete intervals of time. In several situations, reference is made to the authors who are famous today, such as Newton, the Bernoullis, Euler, dAlembert, Lagrange, Lambert, Volta, etc. Not so much because they were the most creative and original minds, but mainly because their writings represent a synthesis of contemporary and previous studies. The above names should, therefore, be considered more labels of a period than references to real historical characters. The history of science was not made up of isolated heroes, but by an entire community and its legacy, by teachers, anonymous collaborators of celebrities, playing this role often only as a result of their social status. It is true that in the 18th century scientific research was carried out by a handful of scholars; though small, it was still an army, however, whose generals are only representative of the victories carried out by the soldiers. Referring only to the great characters of science has in any case an advantage that there is no need entering the merits of their acquisitions because well documented by historians, thus leaving room for other aspects.