BOSCOVICH AND ATOMS AS POINT CENTERS OF FORCE Copyright Val Dusek Department of Philosophy U of New Hampshire Durham NH 03824

USA Valdusek@aol.com Roger Joseph Boscovich, known in Italy as Ruggero Guiseppe Boscovich, an d in his native Yugoslavia as Rudjer Josip Boscovic (1711-1787), was a Yugoslav, Jesuit, physicist, philosophe r and poet. He is the source for a theory of matter based on point-atoms which was accepted by many nineteenth-cent ury physicists. These included the founders of field theory: Faraday and Maxwell. Boscovich studied philosophy, wh ich then included physics, astronomy, and mathematics, at the Collegium Romanum in Rome, and taught mathema tics there. He was involved in numerous scientific projects including surveys to determine the shape of the Ear th through measuring a meridian in Italy, and observations on eclipses including a journey via Argentina to Califor nia in 1769 to observe the transit of Venus. He invented various practical instruments such as the prismatic micromet er. He also was the first to develop several geometric procedures such as determining the equation of rotation of a p lanet from three observations and computing the orbit of a planet from three observations. Interestingly, the mos t recent Encyclopedia Britannica article on Boscovich discusses his practical observations and calculations in a half-pag e article, but does not mention his theory of matter. In contrast, the 1801 edition of the same encyclopedia devote d fourteen pages to Boscovich and his theory of matter. Boscovich was unusual in the eighteenth-century physics community in Eur ope both in being a Jesuit and in being a resident of the "backward" southeastern fringe of Europe. It is perhaps significant that the "dematerialization of matter" via the force theory of matter was initiated by Boscovich, from Southeas tern Europe, on the fringe of the Ottoman Empire, and Kant from Knigsberg, far in the east of Europe, which became K aliningrad in the Soviet Union. Boscovich was a literary figure as well as a physicist and philosopher. Among his one-hundred or so books and articles are scientific treatises written in verse and a long commentary on a poem by Say which presents the ideas of Descartes and Newton. Stay's poem was an attempt to pen a modern equivalent of the ancient Roman Lucretius's On the Nature of Things. This was the same project that another poet had earlier p lanned to undertake, and for which Leibniz sketched his Monadology. After serving in Rome, and as an astronomer in Milan and other parts of Italy, with the suppression of the Jesuit order in Italy in 1773, Boscovich went to France. In France as a Jesuit and a foreigner he was opposed and despised by such partisans of the Enlightenment as D'Alembert. In part for reas on of his Jesuitical affiliations, Boscovich's theory was for the most part not praised or referred to in France, w ith the exception of the nineteenth century elasticity theorist, Saint Vernant. Various important English physicist s, however, frequently referred to Boscovich. Boscovich was the one of the first physicist in Italy to fully accep t Newton's theory of gravitation. He

combined adherence to Leibniz's Principle of Continuity with Newton's conception of force exerted by atoms. Leibniz had rejected the idea of indivisible atoms, and presented the view of matter as ultimately continuous. Leibniz's monads were not material but spiritual. They were "metaphysical points", or spiritual atoms, but they did not correspond to material atoms. Newton presented atoms as indivisible and absolutely hard. Lei bniz conceived of any bodies, which collided, as elastic or soft because they were indefinitely divisible. Collisio ns of Newton's atoms, however, involved absolutely hard bodies and the instantaneous reversal of velocity. This was the conception from which Boscovich began his criticism and revision of the Newtonian atom. Boscovich noted that the instantaneous reversal of velocity in collision of Newtonian atoms was inconsistent with the principle of continuity. There should be a gradual transition from any velocity to any other. Furthermore, Boscovich believed that at the instant of collision, the Newtonian atom possesse d two velocities simultaneously, its incoming velocity and its recoil velocity. Boscovich claimed that this was cont radictory. Although Boscovich based himself on Leibniz's principle of continuity, he accepted Newton's conception of gravitational force. Leibniz had, as we saw earlier, rejected Newton's gravitational force as "occult". In addition, Leibniz claimed that all gravitational attraction had to be accounted for by contact action of the material aether (the very fine material which supposedly filled all space) in the manner of the Cartesians. Boscovich, while accepting Newton's conception of force, rejected Newton 's conception of the absolutely hard atom. Boscovich developed a theory of atoms as point-centers of repulsive force . At the point where the atom existed, the repulsive force went to infinity. Boscovich reconciled the need for a repul sive force, which prevented atoms from penetrating each other with the attractive force, which accounted for gravitatio nal attraction at great distances. He did this by presenting a curve of force which started as infinitely repulsive at the point of the atom and rapidly declined to a force somewhat attractive at a short distance from the atom and then became prog ressively more weakly attractive (see diagram). This curve produced by Boscovich by a priori reasoning corresponds al most exactly in shape to the potential curve of the hydrogen atom in contemporary quantum mechanics. For some other atoms, the curve, instead of making the transition from r epulsion to gradually decreasing attraction, oscillates back and force between fairly strong attraction and repul sion near the atom (see diagram 2). This could account for the fact that other atoms would be stably attracted to an atom at a certain distance or distances from the first atom. Thus, molecular structure, as we would call it, could be explai ned by this simple curve of force. In the case of metals, Boscovich's diagrams bear a striking resemblance to the contempo rary, potential diagrams in the theory of solid-state physics (see diagram 3). Boscovich's curve of force can be used to explain a vast number of pheno mena in chemistry and physics. It does not involve the appeal to separate attractive and repulsive forces although it can and was used by theorists who wished to supplement Newton's theory of gravitation at long distances with a the ory of repulsive forces at short

distances. Sir Robert Greene in the early eighteenth-century, presented a view of this sort in his Philosophy of the Expansive and Contractive Forces in 1726. However, Greene's work is extremely p rimitive and in places more Aristotelian than Newtonian. Boscovich, being a Jesuit, was trained in scholast icism, but his science is certainly up-todate Newtonian in nature. Boscovich's theory is commonly referred to in the nineteenth-century as "Boscovichian atomism." Part of the theory that was widely accepted and referred to was the conception of atoms as m aterial points. This idea was not totally original with Boscovich insofar as the representation of atoms as mathem atical points was used by Newton himself and by numerous physicists in the early eighteenth-century. However, Ne wton did not believe that atoms were literal, mathematical points, but rather that they were tiny, hard spheres. Bos covich took the notion of atoms as points quite literally in a metaphysical sense, and considered it together with his for ce curve to solve the problems raised by Newton's notion of hard-sphere atoms. Many mathematical physicists in the late eighteenth- and early nineteenthcentury habitually represented atoms as mathematical points, and as the formal c onceptual apparatus of analytical mechanics became more and more familiar, this technical device came to more lite rally believed. The question can be raised as to whether Boscovich was genuinely an atom ist at all. His atoms have no spatial dimensions, and have no material content. One might think of his "atoms" as sim ply singularities in the distribution of force where the repulsive force goes to infinity. This view is more like the co nception, which Faraday took from Boscovich. Some commentators have claimed that Boscovich is not an atomist at a ll. However, Boscovich endowed his point-atoms with inertia as well as with attractive and repulsive force. T his makes his points into point-atoms and not into pure singularities in a field of force. Boscovich's forces are propert ies of the atom. In field theories, the forces are properties of space. Actually, it is Kant who presented atoms as pure singu larities in a field of force, and not as genuine "things". For Kant, as for Faraday, forces are properties not of matter , but of space. Indeed, the forces are matter. We shall discuss Kant's theory in the next section. A number of physicists in the nineteenth-century referred favorably to B oscovich. In some cases, such as that of Faraday, Maxwell, and Saint Venant, there is a significant role of Boscovich' s ideas. In other cases, such as those of William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), William Rowan Hamilton, Joseph Henry, and others, the extent to which ideas of Boscovich are genuinely present in their thought and the extent to which their r eferences to Boscovich are merely historical decorations are more difficult to assess. Just as Newton's reference s to Hermes or Pythagoras need not mean that he actually found physical principles in them, the frequent references to B oscovich in the nineteenth century may simply be a placeholder for any view of atoms different from that of the hard sp here or elastic sphere models. The mathematical physicists who developed rational mechanics during the eighteenth-century often used hypotheses of point-atoms as well as hypotheses of continuous matter. In the ca se of the hypotheses of continuous

matter, one can interpret these either as a rejection of atomism or as the ident ification of the atoms in the continuous substance as mathematical points. It is often difficult to assess how seriously in a realistic sense these hypotheses are meant. On the one hand the mass point can be a calculational device, following Newton's use of the point center of mass as the locus of all mass of a planet or an atom. On the other hand the poi nt atom can be taken realistically as a genuine physical object. The giants of Continental rational mechanics do not refer to Boscovich, nor need they do so. However, part of the reason for lack of reference to Boscovich among the French purveyors of rati onal mechanics lies in the cultural conditions in France at that time. As was noted earlier, Boscovich the Jesuit w as opposed and ridiculed by the supporters of the Enlightenment. Voltaire and D'Alembert ridiculed Boscovich fo r his Jesuitical and "scholastic" ideas. Boscovich was actually quite up to date in his awareness and advocacy of contemp orary scientific ideas, and as a poet and writer was part of the literary scene of the day. Boscovich was also quite international in his outlook. This was due to his acting as an agent of the church, and having lived all over Europe, f rom as far as Constantinople and England, and had even planned to travel in an astronomical expedition to the Ame ricas. Boscovich is not referred to at all in the Encyclopedia of the French ph ilosophes. This work was a major intellectual work in the combat against the Roman Catholic Church in France. Nu merous articles, indirectly or not so indirectly, cast doubt on religion and emphasized the advances of the sciences a nd technology. D`Alembert, being both a physicist and an important salon figure of the French Enlightenment, influenced the way in which posterity, particularly in France, understood Boscovich. Since D'A lembert was an influential philosopher and literary figure as well as a physicist, his accounts of the history of physi cs were extremely influential in their own right. His own assessments of the debates of the day, such as the so-called vis viva controversy, were considered to be definitive. Later, historians of science were inordinately influenced by D'Alem bert's claims. D'Alembert was highly anti-metaphysical and made such statements as "the essence of matter and the ide a we form of it will always be wrapped in obscurity", "that is what we make up our minds not to know", and "if you strip it of all attributes, substance will be nothing but a word". D'Alembert rejected analyzing force as such. Thu s, he would be prone to dismiss Boscovich's metaphysical theorizing even if Boscovich had not been a Jesuit and a "crude" Eastern European. The influence of Lagrange on the general French ignoring of Boscovich du ring the nineteenth century (with the noted exception of Saint Venant) was similar to that of D'Alembert. Lagrang e was a friend of D'Alembert and held enlightenment attitudes. Also Lagrange is famous for his boast that his Mechani que Analytique does not possess a single picture. Boscovich used the more old-fashioned geometrical method of rea soning. Lagrange presented mechanics as a purely formal structure. Although Boscovich used the geometrical rather than the analytical metho d for both the investigation and

exposition of problems, he was familiar with the calculus. Child, in his introd uction to the Theory of Natural Philosophy, claims that Boscovich's geometrical exposition, without the aid of c alculus, was to popularize his new theory among a wider range of students. However, Boscovich used the geometrical method even in his more specialized works. Nevertheless, Boscovich does refer to the work of D'Alembert , Euler, and Clairaut, and claims that his theory will be useful in accounting for their work. Boscovich's Supplement s to Stay, his commentary on Stay's sastronomical poem, as well as in his De Litteraria Expeditione, uses purely geo metrical presentations but these are, as Todhunter notes, "the work of a professor for the purposes of instruction." Also the French mathematicians of the late eighteenth century attempted to dispense with infinitesimals. That is, they rejected the notion of genuine, infinitesimally short distances or meas ures of the sort which Leibniz had used. D'Alembert was ahead of his time in attempting to replace infinitesimals with li mit processes. However many other French mathematicians, such as Carnot (of the Carnot cycle in thermodynamics) an d Lacroix, attempted to replace infinitesimals with a clumsy and incorrect mixture of finite differences (finite distances) and series. Many works such as those of the philosophe and prophet of progress Condorcet and many calculus t exts of the period such as those of Arbogast, Servois, and Brasseur used this unrigorous and eclectic hodgepodge. L agrange attempted to replace the mysterious infinitesimals by Taylor series even in places where the Taylor serie s have since been found not to exist. It may be that the French rejection of the infinitesimal supported the rejection of the point-atom as well. It is interesting that Cauchy, the founder of truly rigorous approaches to the calculu s, was an advocate of the Boscovich's point atom as well. According to R. H. Kargon, Lagrange "had nothing but contempt for Boscov ichian atomism." Lagrange's contempt probably stemmed from his rejection or apparent rejection of pictorial models, his purely formal approach to mechanics, and his French Enlightenment opposition to Jesuits, as well as to his nationalism. Even more than to D'Alembert, Lagrange's text Analytical Mechanics influ enced later interpretations of the history of mechanics. According to Clifford Truesdell, Langrange's work is ofte n taken as: "a final summary and authority for what was known concerning mechanics before 18 00, but also its historical sections constitute the first history of the mechanics of continuous bodies, and for mech anics more generally, include most of the references consulted by Mach, thus being, doubly, the ultimate source of the historical beliefs commonly infused along with instruction in mechanics today"( ) Truesdell, however, sardonically notes "he who would learn the ideas of mechanics in the Age of Reason must look elsewhere than in this book." Indeed, Truesdell claims that the Analytica l Mechanics "reflects the extreme formalism of the moribund ancien regime. Mechanics, however, will not be reduce d to differential algebra. To a reader of 1958 as well as one of 1788 almost any handful of pages from Newton's Principia contains more of mechanics than Lagrange's whole treatise."

Oddly enough, Lagrange's intellectual successor in the process of the ab straction of rational mechanics, William Rowan Hamilton, was himself an advocate of Boscovich's atomism. Hamilto n was an Irishman and was probably in part influenced by the Scottish appropriation of Boscovich. Hamilt on, in a letter to the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1832, wrote: "I regard a certain atomistic theory as having subjective truth, and being a fit medium between our understand and certain phenomena; although objectively and in the truth of things, the power at tributed to atoms belong not to them but to God. The atomistic theory of which I speak is nearly that of Boscovich, and consists in representing all phenomena of motion as produced by the action of localized energies of attraction or repul sion, each energy having centre in space; and this centre, which is suppose to be a mathematical point, without any figure or dimension, being called an atom instead of a point, merely to mark its conceived possession of, of connection wi th, physical properties or relations." Hamilton, like Hutton, unified his Boscovich with his Berkeley. Hamilto n, who early read Berkeley's criticism of materialism, later was drawn to Boscovich's theory as an alternativ e to materialistic atomism. Bishop Berkeley's idealism is quite foreign to the spirit of Boscovich's Theoria, which insofar as it is not supposed to be independent of metaphysics, is strongly realistic and dualist. Kargon notes tha t both Boscovich and Berkeley "dematerialize matter", but they do so in quite different directions. Boscovich dematerializes matter in the direction of ssmathematical realism of points, while Berkeley dematerializes matter in the di rection of sensations ("ideas of sense"). In a letter to Coleridge Hamilton says that he plans to do for Boscovich what La grange had done for Newton. Ironically, while Lagrange probably dismissed Boscovich for his crude, g eometrical and pictorial approach, and himself bragged that he used no diagrams, Hamilton criticizes Lagrange himse lf as being too much guided by pictorial considerations. Hamilton notes that the new mechanics "...has become more dynamic by having dismissed the conceptions of solidity and cohesion and those other materially imagined ties to geometrical conditions which Lagrange so happily reasoned upon...." Addendum: Visualization and Point Particles: Lagrange is frequently quoted for his boast that his treatise makes no u se of illustrations. A similarly famous claim is made by Dirac early in his Principles of Quantum Mechanics that the pur pose of science is not to provide pictures but to make numerical predictions. However, late in his life, Dirac ga ve a talk at Boston University on how he made use of diagrams from projective geometry in making his inferences in quantu m mechanics. When Dirac was asked if his talk could be published, he shamefacedly said that his diagrammatic techniques were not sufficiently technical for publication. Thus the physicist and philosopher public thinks of Dirac as someone who reasons without pictures, while in fact he did use diagrams. Is this claim of Hamilton's concerning the geometrical aspect of Lagrang e's mechanics, merely a personal

foible? After all, Lagrangian mechanics seems less abstract than Hamiltonian me chanics, but both use multidimensional spaces and in elementary texts on quantum mechanics, the Lagrangian is developed as a prolegomena to the Hamiltonian. However, one possible insight into the geometrical quality of the Lagrangian is in Feynman's "sum over histories" formulation of quantum mechanics. Feynman used his diagrams as a means of "keeping track of the Lagrangian." Bohr, who opposed visual models in quantum mechanics, denounced Fe ynmann when the latter first presented his diagrams at the Shelter Island conference where quantum field theo ry was first introduced. Heisenberg, who earlier had opposed the pictorial approach of Schrdinger's wave mechanics, and found the latter "disgusting" later, apparently in a compromise to the partisans of intuition, said that Feynm ann diagrams might be the "Neue Anschaulichkeit", that is, the new intuitive approach to quantum mechanics.

BOSCOVICH: ENDNOTES "Boscovich, Roger," Encyclopedia. Britannica, 1986. . Lancelot Law Whyte, "Boscovich, Roger Joseph," in Paul Edwards, ed., Encyclo pedia of Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 351. . Ibid. . Cecil Schneer, Mind and Matter, Grove Press, 1970, p. 168, fig. 12 caption. . Joseph Agassi, Faraday as Natural Philosopher, Chicago: University of Chicag o Press, 1971, p. 86. . Agassi, ibid., p. 85. . Ronald Grimsley, Jean D'Alembert, Oxford: Oxford University Press,1963, p. 2 40. . Boscovich, Theory of Natural Philosophy, op. cit., p. 259. . Todhunter, M.A., A History of Mathematical Theories of Attraction and the Fi gure of the Earth, Volume 1, Dover, New York, 1962, pp. 311, 309. . See Boyer, Concepts of the Calculus, pp. 257-266 for a survey of texts of th e period. . Hermann Weyl, Philosophy of Mathematics and Natural Science, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1949, reprinted 1963, p. 169. . R. H. Kargon, American Journal of Physics, Vol. 32, No. 10, Oct. 1964. . Clifford Truesdell, "The Rational Mechanics of Flexible or Deformable Bodies 1638-1788", Leonardi Euleri, Opera Omnia, Series Secunda, Vol. X-XI, 1960, p. 409. . Ibid., p. 411. . Ibid., p. 412. . Richard Olson, "The Reception of Boscovich's Ideas in Scotland," Isis, 60, 1 969, pp 91-103. See also Olson's Scottish Philosophy and British Physics, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton Univer sity Press, 1975. . Kargon, "W.R. Hamilton and Boscovichian Atomism", Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 26, January 1965, pp. 137-141. . Kargon, ibid., p. 137-138. Letter to Coleridge, 13 October, 1832, in Graves, Life of W. R. Hamilton, vol . 1, p. 593, citied by Kargon, "William Rowan Hamilton, Michael Faraday, and the Revival of Boscovichian Atomism," American Journal of Physics, vol. 32,

1964, p. 793. . Hamilton, William Rowan, Mathematical Papers, vol. 2, p. 104, cited by Kargo n, "W. R. Hamilton," J. Hist. Ideas, op. cit. . Marx Wartofsky, personal communication. . Miller, Arthur I., "Visualization Lost and Regained," in Judith Wechsler,On Aesthetics in Science, MIT, 1978. See also, in greater scope, Miller's Imagry in Scientific Thought, Boston, Massachus etts: Birkhauser, 1984.