Abstract
Notable among the by-products of the late nineteenth-century controversies over the atomic theory of matter was the first full-scale contribution to the philosophy of science written in America,. John Bernard Stallo’s The Concepts and Theories of Modern Physics. The work of a lawyer and jurist largely self-trained in philosophy, its publication in 1881 provoked considerable (and mostly hostile) reaction1, for Stallo attacked atomism and mechanism at a time when scientists were still divided into vociferously opposing camps over the question of whether or not the ultimate structure of matter was atomic - indeed, were in sharp disagreement over even the utility of the hypothetical concept ’atom’ in physics and chemistry.2
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© 1976 D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
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Strong, J.V. (1976). The erkenntnistheoretikers Dilemma: J. B. Stallo’s Attack on Atomism in His Concepts and Theories of Modern Physics (1881). In: Cohen, R.S., Hooker, C.A., Michalos, A.C., Van Evra, J.W. (eds) PSA 1974. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 32. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-1449-6_5
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