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Ruggiero Boscovich and “the Forces Existing in Nature”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 February 2018

Luca Guzzardi
Luca Guzzardi*
Affiliation:
Dipartimento di Filosofia, Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy E-mail: luca.guzzardi@unimi.it
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Argument

According to a long-standing interpretation which traces back to Max Jammer's Concepts of Force (1957), Ruggiero G. Boscovich would have developed a concept of force in the tradition of Leibniz's dynamics. In his variation on the theme, basic properties of matter such as solidity or impenetrability would be derived from an interplay of some “active” force of attraction and repulsion that any primary element of nature (“point of matter” in Boscovich's theory) would possess. In the present paper I discuss many flaws of this interpretation and argue for an alternative point of view, according to which the crucial aspect in the development of Boscovich's natural philosophy is his early definition of forces as “mathematical determinations” to have a certain state of motion. This is consistent with a Newtonian background and has as its epistemological consequence a certain agnosticism about the nature of forces and a “mathematical neutralism” (mathematics as a neutral tool, allowing for a plurality of interpretations).

Type
Research Article
Information
Science in Context , Volume 30 , Issue 4 , December 2017 , pp. 385 - 422
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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