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The Erkenntnistheoretiker's Dilemma: J. B. Stallo's Attack on Atomism in his Concepts and Theories of Modern Physics (1881)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

John V. Strong
John V. Strong*
Affiliation:
Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh and Boston College
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Extract

Notable among the by-products of the late nineteenth-century controversies over the atomic theory of matter was the first full-scale contribution to the philosophy of science written in America, John Bernard Stallo's The Concepts and Theories of Modem Physics. The work of a lawyer and jurist largely self-trained in philosophy, its publication in 1881 provoked considerable (and mostly hostile) reaction, for Stallo attacked atomism and mechanism at a time when scientists were still divided into vociferously opposing camps over the question of whether or not the ultimate structure of matter was atomic - indeed, were in sharp disagreement over even the utility of the hypothetical concept ‘atom’ in physics and chemistry.

Evér since the early 1800s, when Dalton had transformed the corpuscular hypothesis from a commonplace of the prevailing natural philosophy into a working part of chemistry, the fortunes of atomism had risen and fallen as competing atomic and non-atomic theories were matched against the accumulating experimental evidence.

Type
Contributed Papers: Session I
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1974 , 1974 , pp. 105 - 123
Copyright
Copyright © 1976 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht-Holland

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