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Reception of Bošković's Natual Philosophy at Princeton (1844-1846)
Ivica Martinović
; Institut za filozofiju, Zagreb, Hrvatska
Sažetak
Joseph Henry’s view of Bošković’s natural philosophy over the last three years of the former’s professorship at Princeton can be gleaned from three sources: the scientist’s library, his scientific correspondence, and the final exam in natural philosophy.
Among the books of Henry’s private library was John Robison’s A System of Mechanical Philosophy (1822) which, in its first volume, includes a most comprehensive presentation of Bošković’s natural philosophy published in Scotland in the first half of the nineteenth century. No doubt Henry studied Robison’s work very thoroughly, as he adopted and later published in his »Somatology« the experiments which proved alternating action of attractive and repulsive force.
While working on his Syllabus of Lectures in Physics, Henry had the opening parts of the manuscript peer-reviewed by Lewis R. Gibbes, whose critical comments concerned the action of repulsive force and alternating action of attractive and repulsive force. In the early days of 1846 Daniel B. Smith, one of Henry’s correspondents, most likely under the influence of Faraday, argued persuasively that with future research physics would rest only upon one magnitude – force, and Bošković’s theory of forces was to provide a unique interpretation of forces in nature.
Boškovićs theory can be traced among the exam questions in somatology which Henry had formulated for the final exam in natural philosophy in his last days at Princeton, before becoming the first secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. As no offical evidence on the exams from this period has survived, this information originates from a diary entry of one of Henry’s students.
The three aforementioned sources reveal Henry’s distinctive reception forms of Bošković’s natural philosophy: the work of Robison the Boschovichian, Boschovichian topics as discussed by Henry’s correspondents, and direct mention of Bošković’s theory in the Princeton exam paper.
In addition, a parallel can be drawn between Henry’s and Bošković’s approach to natural philosophy particularly in terms of structure. Commonly termed as de principiis corporum, an introductory chapter which traditionally serves to open the elaboration on natural philosophy, Bošković has used to expound the theory of forces (Lat. theoria virium), explaining the structure and properties of matter, and so has Henry for his somatology and affiliated topics. Yet, this structural similarity did not exclude different standpoints on some important topics: definition of mobility, the law of inertia, theoretical explanation of magnetism, and approach to the vis viva.
Ključne riječi
Hrčak ID:
72240
URI
Datum izdavanja:
3.12.2001.
Posjeta: 904 *