The Conception of Mechanism

Hermann von Helmholtz not only rarely made a major issue out of the idea of nature that he advanced most notably in popular writing and which was linked to his scientific work in many ways; he also left it up to others to coin a term for it.²⁷ What I would like to call Helmholtz's mechanism was one of the fundamental convictions shared by most physicists and large circles of other scientists throughout the second half of the nineteenth century.²⁸ In two passages, Helmholtz very clearly exemplifies his idea of nature. One is found in the introduction to his most famous treatise The Conservation of Force: A Physical Memoir [Ueber die Erhaltung der Kraft], published in 1847, where he writes programmatically: “Natural phenomena should be traced back to the movements of material objects which possess inalterable motive forces that are dependent only on spatial relations”.²⁹ He defines these forces more closely as “inalterable forces of attraction and repulsion, the intensity of the forces depending on the distance”.30 Twenty-two years later, basking in twofold fame as a physiologist and physicist, he says in his opening address to the Association of German Natural Researchers and Doctors [Versammlung Deutscher Naturforscher und Ärzte] in Innsbruck: