Papers by Christiaan Boudri
Boston studies in the philosophy of science, 2002
Voltaire, the glorifier of reason and the world, must certainly have looked back on his time in B... more Voltaire, the glorifier of reason and the world, must certainly have looked back on his time in Berlin with ambivalent feelings. After the death of his sweetheart the Marquise du Châtelet he spent some time at Sanssouci, Frederick the Great’s country residence in Potsdam. He soon proved to be more imaginative and more entertaining than the then President of the Royal Academy, Maupertuis, so that they quickly became enemies.1 The fact that Voltaire had been bypassed for the presidency six years earlier, in favor of Maupertuis, may also have played a role. Voltaire was bent on revenge, which can indeed be sweet.
Boston studies in the philosophy of science, 2002
In the previous chapters I have shown that in Newton’s view, force was a substance, and in Leibni... more In the previous chapters I have shown that in Newton’s view, force was a substance, and in Leibniz’s view analogous to it. This means that the underlying idea about the action of force was that force is the cause of changes in motion and is simultaneously the change itself, which is, as it were, transferred. It would, however, be wrong to consider this double meaning as vagueness or ambiguity, since these are two aspects of one and the same thing. It is more appropriate to call the concept of force a unity-in-duality. To clarify this, I have used the metaphor of water pouring from one barrel to another. This metaphor justifies my calling this a remnant of the substantial concept of force in scholastics. After all, when scholasticism turned to the concept of impetus for a solution to the problem of motion, the cause of the perseverance of motion was equated to the cause of the change in motion.
Boston studies in the philosophy of science, 2002
Everyone who addresses the controversy surrounding the concept of living force discusses Gottfrie... more Everyone who addresses the controversy surrounding the concept of living force discusses Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, or rather, his legacy. In fact we owe both the definition of the term and the beginning of the controversy to Leibniz.2 One might consider a less emphatic view of his importance, if one took only the superficial and one-sided transmission of Leibniz’s philosophy in the eighteenth century into account. Many of the physicists from that period, even those who were sympathetic to his ideas, had a caricatured picture of Leibniz’s system.
Boston studies in the philosophy of science, 2002
Lagrange was not only the person who laid the analytic foundation for variational calculus, he wa... more Lagrange was not only the person who laid the analytic foundation for variational calculus, he was also willing to elaborate on the idea that the principle of least action could be the fundamental principle for all mechanics, including both statics and dynamics. In the 1750s he was enthusiastically hailed as the defender of this new approach to mechanics by Euler and Maupertuis. But in 1788 the same Lagrange wrote the classic work Mechanique analitique,2 in which the principle of least action appears only as a derivative theorem, subordinated to the principle of virtual velocities. Thus Lagrange would seem to personify the transformation of the principle of least action from a teleological principle to a mathematical theorem.
Boston studies in the philosophy of science, 2002
Boston studies in the philosophy of science, 2002
In this study J. Christiaan Boudri seeks to throw a new light on the great disputes about force i... more In this study J. Christiaan Boudri seeks to throw a new light on the great disputes about force in eighteenth century physics by situating them in the context of the metaphysical disputes then current. To this end he marks out a trajectory of conceptual development which begins with seventeenth century understandings of force as something quasisubstantial and ends with the late eighteenth century construal of force as expressing a structural relationship among spatiotemporal elements. Boudri argues that this development cannot be properly understood as the mere expunging of metaphysical elements from mechanics as the Newtonian natural philosophy became accepted and recast mathematically. He contends rather that the controversies over the true measure of force (1686-1743), the status of the principle of least action (1734-1781), and the Berlin prize essay competition on the foundations of force (1779), are inexplicable from a narrowly mechanical perspective, and involve an uneliminab...
List of Illustrations. Acknowledgements. 1. Introduction. Part A: The Unity of the Concept of For... more List of Illustrations. Acknowledgements. 1. Introduction. Part A: The Unity of the Concept of Force. 2. Force like Water. 3. Leibniz: Force as the Essence of Substance. Part B: Towards a New Metaphysics. 4. From Cause to Phenomenon. 5. From Efficient to Final Causes: The Origin of the Principle of Least Action. Part C: Between Metaphysics and Mechanics. 6. The Concept of Force in the 1779 Berlin Essay Competition. 7. Lagrange's Concept of Force. 8. Metaphysics Concealed. Bibliography. Index.
In this study J. Christiaan Boudri seeks to throw a new light on the great disputes about force i... more In this study J. Christiaan Boudri seeks to throw a new light on the great disputes about force in eighteenth century physics by situating them in the context of the metaphysical disputes then current. To this end he marks out a trajectory of conceptual development which begins with seventeenth century understandings of force as something quasisubstantial and ends with the late eighteenth century construal of force as expressing a structural relationship among spatiotemporal elements. Boudri argues that this development cannot be properly understood as the mere expunging of metaphysical elements from mechanics as the Newtonian natural philosophy became accepted and recast mathematically. He contends rather that the controversies over the true measure of force (1686-1743), the status of the principle of least action (1734-1781), and the Berlin prize essay competition on the foundations of force (1779), are inexplicable from a narrowly mechanical perspective, and involve an uneliminab...
Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 2002
Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 2002
Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 2002
Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 2002
Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 2002
Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 2002
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Papers by Christiaan Boudri