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Boscovich in Britain

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Relocating the History of Science

Part of the book series: Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science ((BSPS,volume 312))

Abstract

The famous atomic theory invented by Roger Boscovich, which he described as a mixture of metaphysics and geometry, aimed primarily at a reform in the teaching of natural philosophy in Jesuit colleges. The suppression of the Society soon rendered that use moot. The theory lived on, however, and prospered, primarily in Britain. Among the causes of this unlikely success was the removal from the theory of the metaphysical traits that to Boscovich were its main attraction. What is known as the Boscovichian atom is not Boscovich’s atom.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Boscovich to his brother Bartolomeo, 14 Jan. and 4 Feb. 1760, in Boscovich (2006a), 2: 203, 215.

  2. 2.

    Same to same, 29 May 1760, ibid., 2: 285.

  3. 3.

    Same to same, 11, 14, and 22 May 1760, ibid., 274, 276, 279.

  4. 4.

    Same to same, 19 Aug, 6 and 20 Nov 1760, ibid., 353, 389–90, 400; Feingold (1993), 517–18; McCormmach (2012), 57–68.

  5. 5.

    Boscovich to his brother, 20 Nov 1760, in Boscovich (2006a), 2: 402.

  6. 6.

    Boscovich (1966), 6–7.

  7. 7.

    Ibid., 27–9 (§§30–38), 40 (§§73–75).

  8. 8.

    Ibid., 21 (§9); cf. Marković, in White (1961), 146.

  9. 9.

    White, in White (1961), 119.

  10. 10.

    Boscovich (1966), 49 (§100, 102), 81 (§209), quote.

  11. 11.

    Boscovich to his brother, 14 Jan 1760, in Boscovich (2006b), 2: 203, and to G.S. Conti, 26 Apr 1760, in ibid., 5.1: 24.

  12. 12.

    Boscovich (1966), 55–6 (§§124–6), 195–6 (§§555–6).

  13. 13.

    Cf. Baldini (1993), 85, 88–93, 99–102, 105–9, and (2006), 405–8.

  14. 14.

    Priestley (1970), 95–6; Schofield (1970), 242–8.

  15. 15.

    Priestley (1772), 383, 390–4.

  16. 16.

    Priestley (1777), ii–v, 11–13.

  17. 17.

    Ibid., 24–8 (précis of Boscovich), 34–40.

  18. 18.

    Priestley to Boscovich, 19 Aug 1778, in Priestley (1966), 166–7.

  19. 19.

    Priestley (1793), 4, 24.

  20. 20.

    Olson (1969), 92–4.

  21. 21.

    Stewart, quoted by Olson (1975), 105–6.

  22. 22.

    Baldini (2006), 418–23; Robison (1790), 83; Playfair (1822), 4: 156.

  23. 23.

    Cf. Robison to Watt, Dec 1796, in Robinson and McKie (1970), 248.

  24. 24.

    Robison, in EB 3:Suppl. 1: 103a, 748b, 790a (quote), and (1822), 1: 267, 294, 297–8.

  25. 25.

    Robison (1804), 434–5.

  26. 26.

    Robison, in EB 3:Suppl. 1: 106–7 (art. “Boscovich”).

  27. 27.

    Robison, System (1822), 4: 292, 299 (quote).

  28. 28.

    Robison, in EB 3:Suppl. 1: 790b (art. “Impulse”); cf. ibid., 1: 103n (“Boscovich”). For the Newtonian force tradition, see Schofield (1970), 37, 39, 238–9, 251–2; Heiman and McGuire (1971), 261–304; Heimann (1971); Cantor (1983), 71–2; Harmon (1993)

  29. 29.

    Robison (1798), 180–4 (Laplace), 329, 367, 369 (Priestley); Morrell (1971), 43, 51. Cf. Heilbron (2011), 214–228. Robison was not always faithful in his renderings of Laplace; James Keir to Watt, 24 Nov 1797, in Robinson and Mckie (1970), 283–5.

  30. 30.

    Robison and Gleig, EB 4, 2: 42a, 45a, 46a (quote), 51–3, 54b–55a, 57–8, 59a.

  31. 31.

    Ibid., 55a, 59a.

  32. 32.

    Olson (1971), 40–1, and (1975), v–vi, 23, 211–12.

  33. 33.

    Leslie (1804), 114–25, 515; cf. Morrell (1975), 69–71, 76–7, 78.

  34. 34.

    Thomson, in EB 3:Suppl. 1: 342; Robison, in Black, Lectures (1803), 1: 515, 519–20; Robison to Watt, 30 Jul 1784, and 14 Jan 1798, in Robinson and Mckie (1970), 387, 285–6.

  35. 35.

    Thomson (1801), in EB 3:Suppl. 1: 342, 260nD (art. “Chemistry”); cf. Feingold (1993), 522.

  36. 36.

    Philosophical magazine 22, 141.

  37. 37.

    Hamilton to E. O’Brien, 1835, in Graves (1882), 2: 398, and to Coleridge, 3 Oct 1832, ibid., 1: 593.

  38. 38.

    Hankins (1980), 157, 166, 181–2.

  39. 39.

    H.F.C. Logan to Hamilton, 31 May, and reply, 27 June 1834, in Graves (1882), 2: 85–8.

  40. 40.

    Hamilton to his sister, 30 June 1834, in Graves (1882), 2: 96.

  41. 41.

    Agassi (1971), 80-1n, and, especially, Williams (1965), 88, 126–7, 279–82, summarized for criticism by Spencer (1967), 184–7.

  42. 42.

    Faraday (1844), 136–44. Seven years earlier the editors of the Philosophical magazine had felt obliged to refer its readers to Priestley’s description of Boscovich’s atomism, assuming, apparently, that they did not know its basic assumptions. Williams (1965), 294–6.

  43. 43.

    Cf. Agassi (1971), 84, 323, and Cantor (1991), 173. The rule states that the general properties that we observe in the bodies surrounding us must be assumed to belong to all matter whatsoever.

  44. 44.

    Quoted by Levere (1968), 105–7.

  45. 45.

    These views are recollections of Faraday’s opinions expressed in Benjamin Brodie to Faraday, 14 Jan 1859, in Faraday (1871), 2: 920, where Brodie is given incorrectly as “Broost;” Cantor (1991), 2ll (last quote).

  46. 46.

    Quoted in Levere (1971), 77. Cf. ibid., 96–102.

  47. 47.

    Quoted from Young’s notebooks by Cantor (1983), 134, and from his Course of lectures in natural philosophy and the mechanical arts (1807), 1: 751, by Feingold (1993), 522.

  48. 48.

    Hutton (1815), 1: 22–3, 331–2, and 2: 25–6.

  49. 49.

    Gilbert (“Giddy”) Davies to Charles Daubney, Professor of Chemistry at Oxford, in Levere (1971), 96–7.

  50. 50.

    Maxwell (1890), 2: 221.

  51. 51.

    Maxwell (1890), 2: 412 (first quote), and, referee report, 1876, quoted in Harmon (1998), 184. Maxwell (1890), 2: 457–61, describes ways of computing atomic dimension.

  52. 52.

    Maxwell (1890), 2: 448–50 (art. “Atom”), and ibid. 316 (“Action”).

  53. 53.

    Ibid., 448, 214, and 471, resp.

  54. 54.

    Ibid., 29, 41, 71.

  55. 55.

    Kelvin, cited by Merz (1906), 1: 358n, from a text of 1860.

  56. 56.

    Kelvin (1904), 123 (quote, text of 1884), 653–5, 645–6 (1893), 667–8 (1902). Thomspon (1910), 2: 889, 893, 1052, 1076–7, 1080.

  57. 57.

    Kelvin (1893), in Hertz (1893), xi (quote), xv.

  58. 58.

    Ibid., xi. Cf. Boscovich (1966), 179–80 (§507), on heat, and the parallel passage on electric fluid, 181 (§511).

  59. 59.

    Merz (1906), 1: 357, 358n, 371n; 2: 29, 351n.

  60. 60.

    Ibid., 1: 359n.

  61. 61.

    Ibid., 1: 358n; Kelvin to Stokes, 4 Oct 1901, in Wilson (1990), 2: 751. Boscovich is not mentioned in the correspondence between Kelvin and Stokes printed by Wilson, some 656 letters over 55 years.

  62. 62.

    Kelvin (1904), 540–3 (text of 1901); cf. Wilson (1993), 601–13.

  63. 63.

    Thomson (1904), 48–51, 92, 98 (quote), 103–4.

  64. 64.

    Thomson to Oliver Lodge, 11 Apr 1904, in Rayleigh (1942), 140–1.

  65. 65.

    Thomson (1907), 156–60.

  66. 66.

    Ibid., 160–1.

  67. 67.

    Boscovich (1966), 91–2 (§§230–2)

  68. 68.

    Heilbron and Kuhn (1969), 223–4, 245–52.

  69. 69.

    Gill (1941), 26–8.

  70. 70.

    Bohr (2007), 104–5, 517, 23–4 (text of 1958/9).

  71. 71.

    Zamagna (1787), xi.

  72. 72.

    Tadić, in Philosophy (1987), 126; Šlaus, ibid., 111; White (1961), 106, 124 (quotes); Gill (1941), 27–8, 31–47; Martinović (1988), 211–12.

  73. 73.

    EB x is used here and in the notes to signify the xth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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  1. University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

    J. L. Heilbron

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  1. Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Athens, Athens, Greece

    Theodore Arabatzis

  2. Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Germany

    Jürgen Renn

  3. Centro Interuniversitário de História das Ciências e Tecnologia (CIUHCT), Faculdade de Ciência, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal

    Ana Simões

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Heilbron, J.L. (2015). Boscovich in Britain. In: Arabatzis, T., Renn, J., Simões, A. (eds) Relocating the History of Science. Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, vol 312. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14553-2_8

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