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A Theory of Natural Philosophy
This translation of Theoria Philosophiae Naturalis makes accessible to the historian and philosopher of science the magnum opus of Roger Joseph Boscovich (1711-1787), one of the most far-reaching scientific thinkers of his time. In this work, Boscovich, in the first scientific generation after Newton (1642-1727), developed a speculative molecular theory of matter, and laid the groundwork for a field theory of physical action. In order to defend the principle of continuity – in particular, to solve the theoretical problems created by bodies in collision, which seemingly results in instantaneous changes of velocity and position – he was led to introduce an atomic theory in which matter is composed of “points of force,” indivisible, without dimension or shape, but, like the atoms of Leucippus, separated by finite distances.
This assumption results in a mechanics and optics of pure geometry in the form of fields of force. It is known that Faraday, who developed the modern theory of fields, studied Boscovich with care. Certainly, Faraday's respect for physical continuity parallels that of Boscovich.
This theory also suggests curious – almost uncanny – intimations of general relativity and quantum physics. Boscovich treats Newton's law of gravitation as a “classical limit,” a good-enough approximation where distances are large: “... nor, I assert, can [the law of gravitation] be deduced from astronomy, that is followed with perfect accuracy even at the distances of the planets and the comets, but one merely that is at most so very nearly correct, that the differences from the law of inverse squares is very slight.” But, he argues, for phenomena on the atomic scale, Newton's “classical” law breaks down altogether, and the forces of attraction are replaced by an oscillation between attractive and repulsive forces.
In spite of his differences with Newton, Boscovich was one of the first Continental scientists to advocate the Newtonian system as an essentially true description of the universe. Of Dalmatian origin, Boscovich was a Jesuit from the age of 15 and served the Papa; States and the French Cpurt, and represented his native city of Ragusa on a diplomatic mission to England. He was elected to the Roayl Society and accorded member ship in the French Academy. His scientific word k ranged from observations of the transit of Mercury, the determination of the figure of the Earth, and measurements of the inequalities of terrestrial gravitation, the theory of comets, and dissertations on tides, double refraction, and the cycloid.
The present text is translated from the Venetian edition of 1763, revised and enlarged by Boscovich from the Viennese edition if 1758.
This assumption results in a mechanics and optics of pure geometry in the form of fields of force. It is known that Faraday, who developed the modern theory of fields, studied Boscovich with care. Certainly, Faraday's respect for physical continuity parallels that of Boscovich.
This theory also suggests curious – almost uncanny – intimations of general relativity and quantum physics. Boscovich treats Newton's law of gravitation as a “classical limit,” a good-enough approximation where distances are large: “... nor, I assert, can [the law of gravitation] be deduced from astronomy, that is followed with perfect accuracy even at the distances of the planets and the comets, but one merely that is at most so very nearly correct, that the differences from the law of inverse squares is very slight.” But, he argues, for phenomena on the atomic scale, Newton's “classical” law breaks down altogether, and the forces of attraction are replaced by an oscillation between attractive and repulsive forces.
In spite of his differences with Newton, Boscovich was one of the first Continental scientists to advocate the Newtonian system as an essentially true description of the universe. Of Dalmatian origin, Boscovich was a Jesuit from the age of 15 and served the Papa; States and the French Cpurt, and represented his native city of Ragusa on a diplomatic mission to England. He was elected to the Roayl Society and accorded member ship in the French Academy. His scientific word k ranged from observations of the transit of Mercury, the determination of the figure of the Earth, and measurements of the inequalities of terrestrial gravitation, the theory of comets, and dissertations on tides, double refraction, and the cycloid.
The present text is translated from the Venetian edition of 1763, revised and enlarged by Boscovich from the Viennese edition if 1758.
- GenresPhilosophyScience
229 pages, Paperback
First published March 15, 1966
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About the author
Ruggero Giuseppe Boscovich
47 books2 followersRoger Joseph Boscovich (1711–1787) was a physicist, astronomer, mathematician, philosopher, diplomat, poet, theologian, Jesuit priest, and a polymath from the Republic of Ragusa. He studied and lived in Italy and France where he also published many of his works.
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June 24, 2022
Nowadays, the pioneering eighteenth-century natural philosopher Roger Joseph Boscovitch, SJ, tends to be caricatured as the inventor of the idea of a universal force law, which can be depicted in a simple diagram everyone will have seen, if he has gone through popular literature on elementary particle physics. But to portray Boscovitch merely as a precursor to the idea of unified field theory misses the true nature of what he accomplishes.
His major work of 1763, A Theory of Natural Philosophy, is now available in facsimile of the 1922 Open Court edition. On the positive side: a Latin-English edition together with a curriculum vitae and an appendix, an essay relating to metaphysics, mind and God. Negatives: no table of contents, no glossary or index, printed in extremely small type, uncommonly poor print quality. Still, one gets the original plus a serviceable translation. So let us set aside complaints about the print quality and focus on the ideas.
Does Boscovitch differ from Newton in his mechanics per se or only in positing a single force law by which to explain all phenomena? The author himself claims his system stands midway between Newton’s and Leibniz’ and has very much in common with both but differs very much from either [p. 35]. Does he build up mechanics in the same way as Newton, who claims to derive the inverse-square law of gravity from the phenomena? No. Rather, Boscovitch is dependent on Newton’s Principia in the sense that he does not develop from scratch the requisite conceptual framework but takes Newton’s three laws of motion for granted. The proofs are up to the standard of rigor typical of theoretical physics but not of mathematical physics. How good are his explanations of physics, or are they largely suppositious as with Descartes? A step above Descartes, since based on more realistic underlying principles (see our reviews of Descartes’ physics here and of its critique by Leibniz here). Boscovitch is an atomist like Democritus but his atoms are zero-dimensional points.
Boscovitch wants to uphold the law of continuity at all costs and rightly recognizes that it stands in conflict with collision of hard bodies [pp. 45-51]. The reason why he believes in a law of continuity [p. 55f] comes down basically to induction from experience along with the presumption it ought to hold unless there be positive evidence against it, which there isn’t [p. 59]. Continuity of all phenomena is ensured by his centers of force since the force law is a continuous function everywhere it is defined. Thus, when two billiard balls approach close to each other, at a small enough separation all the centers of force in the one begin to feel the unbounded repulsion from all the centers of force in the other, causing an elastic bounce. At p. 83, our author promises to deduce why his force law is not arbitrary – one needs an unbounded repulsion at zero radius to explain why matter does not collapse; if the primary particles of matter were composite we’d have to go to a theory with two types of cohesion which he considers unnatural (in effect what we do today with the strong nuclear binding forces). The non-extension of his force centers has the status of a convenient hypothesis [p. 88]: but he doesn’t consider the possibility of having a finite-sized region with potential diverging to infinity as one approaches its boundary.
Indeed, Bosocovitch explains why his force law is reasonable to posit on an empirical basis [p. 95], for non-extended points can be derived as a limit from experience [p. 113]. On p. 109, he dilates on the absurdity of extending Newton’s law of gravitational attraction to short distances: in the absence of Pauli exclusion between electrons, matter must collapse under pressure but it doesn’t! Of course, he presumes any interparticle forces to be central [p. 155]; non-central forces were not to be suspected until Ampère. Boscovitch then investigates the three-body problem in this context [pp. 157-150]. For small enough macroscopic bodies, forces combine to produce an approximate net inverse-square law at great distances apart [pp. 163-167].
If atoms are zero-dimensional whence comes mass? Boscovitch postulates inertia of points from which inertia of bodies [pp. 279-281] – ahead of his time, since he anticipates the electromagnetic world-view of Wien in the early twentieth-century. How does Boscovitch’s account of everyday phenomena differ from Newton’s? First off, a somewhat cumbersome proof of Newton’s result on center of gravity [pp. 189-197]. Then he obtains some further typical results of the familiar classical mechanics: a parallelogram of forces between groups of points [pp. 199-201], conservation of momentum and equality of action and reaction [p. 203] and lastly laws of collision [p. 2905]. What’s interesting is that for Boscovitch these are derived results from a microscopic model whereas for Newton they are almost tautologous statements that have to be posited for macroscopic bodies, not derived.
An important methodological point to keep in mind here is the following: for Boscovitch it is a composition of forces not a resolution as is usual:
The primary elements of matter are considered by most people to be immutable, & of such a kind that it is quite impossible for them to be subject to attrition or fracture, unless indeed the order of phenomena & the whole face of Nature were changed. Now, my elements are really such that neither themselves, nor the law of forces can be changed; & the mode of action when they are grouped together cannot be changed in any way; for they are simple, indivisible & non-extended. From these, by what I have said in Art. 239, when collected together at very small distances apart, in sufficiently strong limit-points on the curve of forces, there can be produced primary particles, less tenacious of form that the simple elements, but yet, on account of the extreme closeness of its parts, very tenacious in consequence of the fact that any other particle of the same order will act simultaneously on all the points forming it with almost the same strength, & because the mutual forces are greater than the difference between the forces with which the different point forming it are affected by the other particle. From such particles of the first order there can be formed particles of a second order, still less tenacious of form; & so on. For the greater the composition, & the larger the distances, the more readily it can come about that the inequality of forces, which alone will disturb the mutual position, begins to be greater than the mutual forces which endeavor to maintain that mutual position, i.e., the form of the particles. Then indeed we shall have change and transformations, such as we see in these bodies of ours, & which are also obtained in most of the particles of the last orders, which compose these new bodies. But the primary elements of matter will be quite immutable, & particles of the first orders will preserve their forms in opposition to even very strong forces from without. [p. 287]
Indeed, he understands very well that his macroscopic mechanics is an approximation, i.e. holds in the scaling limit [p. 227]. A consequence of this perspective he draws is that there is no such thing as absolute rest in nature [p. 85]: in this reviewer’s paraphrase, because attractive and repulsive contributions from all the constituent particles of a body will never cancel exactly.
What about Boscovitch versus Leibniz? Against Leibniz’ qualitatively differing monads: Boscovitch sees that a very large configuration space suffices [p. 93], offering an argument from simplicity (a nice analogy). As for the theory of space and time, for Boscovitch there are two real kinds of modes of existence, relating resp. to space and to time. But he is not very clear on why time is different from space. For it is not usually done to consider the space-time manifold as populated by points having real existence not merely potential. In a daring passage, he suggests that one might view space as imaginary i.e. as a manifold of possible configurations (or local modes) of a collection of simultaneously existing points [pp. 117, 275-277] – methodologically a very interesting picture: geometry is imaginary and derived as an ideal limiting case of experience with physical bodies (advanced for his time, Newton doesn’t appreciate as much). Less metaphysical, perhaps, than Leibniz, Boscovitch with this theory appears to want to get inside the interior complexity of the monad, which Leibniz tells us is in an abstract sense related to literally everything in the universe, and to explain it on the basis of featureless points undergoing a vast array of combinations. Thus, he has no need of a postulate of pre-established harmony; the harmony naturally emerges from the interplay of forces!
On pp. 175-177 an attempt at a consideration of condensed-matter physics. For instance, how to get an approximate rigid rod, with bending forces about the stable configuration. The theory of solids versus fluids [p. 303ff] is not particularly well motivated – he begins to descend to Descartes’ level of physics by assertion of qualitatively plausible pictures, not proofs. Nevertheless, he does anticipate the concept of a molecule [p. 369]. The overall problem: there can be no exact calculations that could be compared with experiment; he contents himself merely with deriving Newtonian mechanics in the scaling limit hence merely reproducing all the predictions of the latter – so fails to offer any means by which to constrain the parameters of his universal force law. It may be convincing that he can reproduce classical mechanics, at least qualitatively, but it is not so convincing that his theory can really explain chemistry, color etc. [pp, 289-291]. He does think that chemical properties would follow from his theory but that to perform the analysis is intractable and would exceed the power of the human mind – at any rate, without quantum mechanics what hope would one have? For instance, he cannot derive the shapes of crystals [p. 311]. Again, Boscovitch’s account of the nature of the four elements commonly so called looks extremely sketchy [p. 319]. Hence what we have is tantamount really only to a sketch of a research program, not the deduction Boscovitch promises at the outset. But one still superior to Descartes’ in that in principle the former has an underlying quantitative force law from which everything is supposed to follow.
Isn’t Boscovitch’s treatment of electrodynamics a little too compressed and perfunctory? The theory of light as tenuous effluvium leaves one dissatisfied [pp. 331-345] – he complains about Huygens, but his theory isn’t any more explanatory: a handwaving account of reflection and refraction (like Newton’s rather contrived model) but no explanation of interference, also no explanation of how there can be the requisite tenuous effluvium in the first place if all material points are identical. Despite his assertion to the contrary, the theory of electricity isn’t convincing at all [p. 361] and cannot even explain what electric charge resp. Franklin’s single electric fluid (where charge would be determined by excess or defect) are supposed to be on his principles. Likewise for magnetism [pp. 363-365].
Appendix pp. 373-391: Are Boscovitch’s philosophy and theology, as distinct from his mathematical physics, any good? Contrast with Newton’s? Boscovitch advances an interesting argument in favor of freedom of the will from high dimensionality of configuration space [p. 381], but still [p. 385] is bound by a Laplacian determinism! Unlike Laplace though [p. 387] he sees a role for God in selecting the initial conditions who enjoys a great degree of liberty in his choice (usually overlooked by fatalists). In general, Boscovitch is concerned to emphasize freedom while Newton places the stress on God’s control of and dominion over everything.
In summary, a curious amalgam: good on fundamental theory but shaky when it comes to applications to actual physical phenomena. In general, rather naïve about how readily his force curve with centers of cohesion would translate into properties of macroscopic bodies – to suggest a point of comparison, consider the use of Lenard-Jones potentials in the protein folding problem: as long as one is willing to grant the internal structure of the amino acid residues arranged by the covalent bonds, there doesn’t seem to be a need for any oscillations between the short-range repulsion and the long-range attraction. Now the Lenard-Jones potential reflects a combination of Pauli exclusion and van der Waals binding farther out. Thus, it derives from a single force force law (Coulomb’s) plus intrinsic spin degrees of freedom in quantum mechanics. The revision of Newtonian classical physics that leads to a successful explanation of atomic and molecular structure and interactions (from which present-day condensed-matter theory is built up), then, turns out to be far more radical than Boscovitch himself would ever have contemplated! As for his having anticipated the program of unification of fundamental forces, this would be a stretch. In his own estimate, Boscovitch’s accomplishment is rather to serve as a precursor to a different kind of unification which emerges over the course of the nineteenth century, in which almost all the phenomena we encounter in the everyday world – the solid, liquid and gaseous phases of matter, transitions among these, heat as a manifestation of thermal energy, optics, electrochemistry and magnetism and so forth – are subsumed under a single umbrella. Were his ghost to reappear today, Boscovitch would probably recognize in the non-relativistic quantum mechanics of the 1920’s and 1930’s onwards and its applications the realization of his dream; with relativistic quantum field theory and high-energy elementary particle physics we enter a realm entirely beyond his ken and only in a distant sense could the standard model with its electroweak gauge unification, not to mention string theory or a prospective quantum theory of gravity, be termed his descendant.
His major work of 1763, A Theory of Natural Philosophy, is now available in facsimile of the 1922 Open Court edition. On the positive side: a Latin-English edition together with a curriculum vitae and an appendix, an essay relating to metaphysics, mind and God. Negatives: no table of contents, no glossary or index, printed in extremely small type, uncommonly poor print quality. Still, one gets the original plus a serviceable translation. So let us set aside complaints about the print quality and focus on the ideas.
Does Boscovitch differ from Newton in his mechanics per se or only in positing a single force law by which to explain all phenomena? The author himself claims his system stands midway between Newton’s and Leibniz’ and has very much in common with both but differs very much from either [p. 35]. Does he build up mechanics in the same way as Newton, who claims to derive the inverse-square law of gravity from the phenomena? No. Rather, Boscovitch is dependent on Newton’s Principia in the sense that he does not develop from scratch the requisite conceptual framework but takes Newton’s three laws of motion for granted. The proofs are up to the standard of rigor typical of theoretical physics but not of mathematical physics. How good are his explanations of physics, or are they largely suppositious as with Descartes? A step above Descartes, since based on more realistic underlying principles (see our reviews of Descartes’ physics here and of its critique by Leibniz here). Boscovitch is an atomist like Democritus but his atoms are zero-dimensional points.
Boscovitch wants to uphold the law of continuity at all costs and rightly recognizes that it stands in conflict with collision of hard bodies [pp. 45-51]. The reason why he believes in a law of continuity [p. 55f] comes down basically to induction from experience along with the presumption it ought to hold unless there be positive evidence against it, which there isn’t [p. 59]. Continuity of all phenomena is ensured by his centers of force since the force law is a continuous function everywhere it is defined. Thus, when two billiard balls approach close to each other, at a small enough separation all the centers of force in the one begin to feel the unbounded repulsion from all the centers of force in the other, causing an elastic bounce. At p. 83, our author promises to deduce why his force law is not arbitrary – one needs an unbounded repulsion at zero radius to explain why matter does not collapse; if the primary particles of matter were composite we’d have to go to a theory with two types of cohesion which he considers unnatural (in effect what we do today with the strong nuclear binding forces). The non-extension of his force centers has the status of a convenient hypothesis [p. 88]: but he doesn’t consider the possibility of having a finite-sized region with potential diverging to infinity as one approaches its boundary.
Indeed, Bosocovitch explains why his force law is reasonable to posit on an empirical basis [p. 95], for non-extended points can be derived as a limit from experience [p. 113]. On p. 109, he dilates on the absurdity of extending Newton’s law of gravitational attraction to short distances: in the absence of Pauli exclusion between electrons, matter must collapse under pressure but it doesn’t! Of course, he presumes any interparticle forces to be central [p. 155]; non-central forces were not to be suspected until Ampère. Boscovitch then investigates the three-body problem in this context [pp. 157-150]. For small enough macroscopic bodies, forces combine to produce an approximate net inverse-square law at great distances apart [pp. 163-167].
If atoms are zero-dimensional whence comes mass? Boscovitch postulates inertia of points from which inertia of bodies [pp. 279-281] – ahead of his time, since he anticipates the electromagnetic world-view of Wien in the early twentieth-century. How does Boscovitch’s account of everyday phenomena differ from Newton’s? First off, a somewhat cumbersome proof of Newton’s result on center of gravity [pp. 189-197]. Then he obtains some further typical results of the familiar classical mechanics: a parallelogram of forces between groups of points [pp. 199-201], conservation of momentum and equality of action and reaction [p. 203] and lastly laws of collision [p. 2905]. What’s interesting is that for Boscovitch these are derived results from a microscopic model whereas for Newton they are almost tautologous statements that have to be posited for macroscopic bodies, not derived.
An important methodological point to keep in mind here is the following: for Boscovitch it is a composition of forces not a resolution as is usual:
The primary elements of matter are considered by most people to be immutable, & of such a kind that it is quite impossible for them to be subject to attrition or fracture, unless indeed the order of phenomena & the whole face of Nature were changed. Now, my elements are really such that neither themselves, nor the law of forces can be changed; & the mode of action when they are grouped together cannot be changed in any way; for they are simple, indivisible & non-extended. From these, by what I have said in Art. 239, when collected together at very small distances apart, in sufficiently strong limit-points on the curve of forces, there can be produced primary particles, less tenacious of form that the simple elements, but yet, on account of the extreme closeness of its parts, very tenacious in consequence of the fact that any other particle of the same order will act simultaneously on all the points forming it with almost the same strength, & because the mutual forces are greater than the difference between the forces with which the different point forming it are affected by the other particle. From such particles of the first order there can be formed particles of a second order, still less tenacious of form; & so on. For the greater the composition, & the larger the distances, the more readily it can come about that the inequality of forces, which alone will disturb the mutual position, begins to be greater than the mutual forces which endeavor to maintain that mutual position, i.e., the form of the particles. Then indeed we shall have change and transformations, such as we see in these bodies of ours, & which are also obtained in most of the particles of the last orders, which compose these new bodies. But the primary elements of matter will be quite immutable, & particles of the first orders will preserve their forms in opposition to even very strong forces from without. [p. 287]
Indeed, he understands very well that his macroscopic mechanics is an approximation, i.e. holds in the scaling limit [p. 227]. A consequence of this perspective he draws is that there is no such thing as absolute rest in nature [p. 85]: in this reviewer’s paraphrase, because attractive and repulsive contributions from all the constituent particles of a body will never cancel exactly.
What about Boscovitch versus Leibniz? Against Leibniz’ qualitatively differing monads: Boscovitch sees that a very large configuration space suffices [p. 93], offering an argument from simplicity (a nice analogy). As for the theory of space and time, for Boscovitch there are two real kinds of modes of existence, relating resp. to space and to time. But he is not very clear on why time is different from space. For it is not usually done to consider the space-time manifold as populated by points having real existence not merely potential. In a daring passage, he suggests that one might view space as imaginary i.e. as a manifold of possible configurations (or local modes) of a collection of simultaneously existing points [pp. 117, 275-277] – methodologically a very interesting picture: geometry is imaginary and derived as an ideal limiting case of experience with physical bodies (advanced for his time, Newton doesn’t appreciate as much). Less metaphysical, perhaps, than Leibniz, Boscovitch with this theory appears to want to get inside the interior complexity of the monad, which Leibniz tells us is in an abstract sense related to literally everything in the universe, and to explain it on the basis of featureless points undergoing a vast array of combinations. Thus, he has no need of a postulate of pre-established harmony; the harmony naturally emerges from the interplay of forces!
On pp. 175-177 an attempt at a consideration of condensed-matter physics. For instance, how to get an approximate rigid rod, with bending forces about the stable configuration. The theory of solids versus fluids [p. 303ff] is not particularly well motivated – he begins to descend to Descartes’ level of physics by assertion of qualitatively plausible pictures, not proofs. Nevertheless, he does anticipate the concept of a molecule [p. 369]. The overall problem: there can be no exact calculations that could be compared with experiment; he contents himself merely with deriving Newtonian mechanics in the scaling limit hence merely reproducing all the predictions of the latter – so fails to offer any means by which to constrain the parameters of his universal force law. It may be convincing that he can reproduce classical mechanics, at least qualitatively, but it is not so convincing that his theory can really explain chemistry, color etc. [pp, 289-291]. He does think that chemical properties would follow from his theory but that to perform the analysis is intractable and would exceed the power of the human mind – at any rate, without quantum mechanics what hope would one have? For instance, he cannot derive the shapes of crystals [p. 311]. Again, Boscovitch’s account of the nature of the four elements commonly so called looks extremely sketchy [p. 319]. Hence what we have is tantamount really only to a sketch of a research program, not the deduction Boscovitch promises at the outset. But one still superior to Descartes’ in that in principle the former has an underlying quantitative force law from which everything is supposed to follow.
Isn’t Boscovitch’s treatment of electrodynamics a little too compressed and perfunctory? The theory of light as tenuous effluvium leaves one dissatisfied [pp. 331-345] – he complains about Huygens, but his theory isn’t any more explanatory: a handwaving account of reflection and refraction (like Newton’s rather contrived model) but no explanation of interference, also no explanation of how there can be the requisite tenuous effluvium in the first place if all material points are identical. Despite his assertion to the contrary, the theory of electricity isn’t convincing at all [p. 361] and cannot even explain what electric charge resp. Franklin’s single electric fluid (where charge would be determined by excess or defect) are supposed to be on his principles. Likewise for magnetism [pp. 363-365].
Appendix pp. 373-391: Are Boscovitch’s philosophy and theology, as distinct from his mathematical physics, any good? Contrast with Newton’s? Boscovitch advances an interesting argument in favor of freedom of the will from high dimensionality of configuration space [p. 381], but still [p. 385] is bound by a Laplacian determinism! Unlike Laplace though [p. 387] he sees a role for God in selecting the initial conditions who enjoys a great degree of liberty in his choice (usually overlooked by fatalists). In general, Boscovitch is concerned to emphasize freedom while Newton places the stress on God’s control of and dominion over everything.
In summary, a curious amalgam: good on fundamental theory but shaky when it comes to applications to actual physical phenomena. In general, rather naïve about how readily his force curve with centers of cohesion would translate into properties of macroscopic bodies – to suggest a point of comparison, consider the use of Lenard-Jones potentials in the protein folding problem: as long as one is willing to grant the internal structure of the amino acid residues arranged by the covalent bonds, there doesn’t seem to be a need for any oscillations between the short-range repulsion and the long-range attraction. Now the Lenard-Jones potential reflects a combination of Pauli exclusion and van der Waals binding farther out. Thus, it derives from a single force force law (Coulomb’s) plus intrinsic spin degrees of freedom in quantum mechanics. The revision of Newtonian classical physics that leads to a successful explanation of atomic and molecular structure and interactions (from which present-day condensed-matter theory is built up), then, turns out to be far more radical than Boscovitch himself would ever have contemplated! As for his having anticipated the program of unification of fundamental forces, this would be a stretch. In his own estimate, Boscovitch’s accomplishment is rather to serve as a precursor to a different kind of unification which emerges over the course of the nineteenth century, in which almost all the phenomena we encounter in the everyday world – the solid, liquid and gaseous phases of matter, transitions among these, heat as a manifestation of thermal energy, optics, electrochemistry and magnetism and so forth – are subsumed under a single umbrella. Were his ghost to reappear today, Boscovitch would probably recognize in the non-relativistic quantum mechanics of the 1920’s and 1930’s onwards and its applications the realization of his dream; with relativistic quantum field theory and high-energy elementary particle physics we enter a realm entirely beyond his ken and only in a distant sense could the standard model with its electroweak gauge unification, not to mention string theory or a prospective quantum theory of gravity, be termed his descendant.
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