Abstract
This chapter treats the emergence of a language of physics loosely unified on a mechanistic basis. The early studies of thermal and electrical phenomena were in the Baconian tradition of exploring nature and relying on informal inductive arguments. Laplace transformed the earlier mechanistic atomism, which accorded philosophical arguments concerning atoms a foundational role, into atomistic mechanism. This gave mechanics a foundational role and introduced testable hypotheses concerning atoms and short-range forces. Atomistic mechanism facilitated the incorporation of the Baconian sciences. This supplied a perspective for a meaningful distinction between depth and relatively phenomenological accounts and facilitated the incorporation and interpretation of the new sciences of thermodynamics and electrodynamics.
Postulate I. Grant that two quantities, whose difference is an infinitely small quantity, may be indifferently used for each other: or (which is the same thing) that a quantity which is increased or decreased only by an infinitely small quantity, may be considered as remaining the same. Marquise d l’Hospital, Analyse (1696)
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Notes
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See the highly popular calculus texts by Granville, later Granville and Smith, and finally Granville, Smith and Longley published between 1929 and 1962 (Granville et al. 1962).
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This is from The Assayer and cited from Drake’s translation (Drake 1957, p. 274).
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The text is on line at www.womeninscience.history.msu.edu. A summary account may be found in Zinsser (2006, chap. 4).
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A more detailed account of Laplace’s mathematical methods may be found in Gillispie et al. (1978, Part IV).
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Truesdell (1980) refers to these developments as a tragicomical history because of the conceptual confusion and misleading data involved. I find his criticism of conceptual confusion too harsh and too dependent on later clarifications.
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The pertinent text is given in (Brush 1965, p. 112).
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Maxwell’s Collected Papers will be cited as Papers with the volume and page; his Treatise by paragraph numbers. Whittaker’s (1960) is still a basic source for the history of electromagnetism. The studies of Maxwell’s development which have influenced the present appraisal are: Campbell and Garnett (1969 [1882]), Turner (1955), Hesse (1963), Kargon (1969), Heimann (1970), Bromberg (1968), Everitt (1975), Wise (1979, 1982), Nersessian (1984), and Siegel (1986). The role of models in Maxwell’s development of electrodynamics is analyzed in Nersessian (2008, chap. 2).
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Mackinnon, E. (2012). The Unification of Classical Physics. In: Interpreting Physics. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 289. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2369-6_3
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