Secchi’s Book on “The Unity of Physical Forces”

Abstract

The book by Father Angelo Secchi, titled in Italian L’Unita delle forze fisiche: Saggio di filosofia naturale, represents a modern approach to physics by looking for a unified view of an enormous variety of different phenomena. While this attempt is a common path for many researchers nowadays, in Secchi’s time it was a modern, somewhat revolutionary viewpoint. In a period marked by an increasingly “analytical” approach to science, thanks in part to the development of efficient modern mathematical tools, Secchi decided to adopt for epistemological reasons a “synthetic,” comprehensive view. In this short note, I will describe how this attempt was developed by Secchi in his book, which was published in 1864 and marked, along with Le Stelle and Le Soleil, the first of his three main books.