The Invention of Physical Science

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xxxiv

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2. Natural Theology, Natural Philosophy, and the Certainty of Mathematics

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

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   2. Devils’ Hells and Astronomers’ Heavens: Religion, Method, and Popular Culture in Speculations About Life on Comets

      • Sara Schechner Genuth

      Pages 3-26

   3. The Doctrine of Chances Without Chance: Determinism, Mathematical Probability, and Quantification in the Seventeenth Century

      • Lorraine J. Daston

      Pages 27-50

   4. God, Truth, and Mathematics in Nineteenth Century England

      • Joan L. Richards

      Pages 51-78

3. Problems of Contingency, Coherence, and Truth

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 79-79

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   2. Theologians, Science, and Theories of Truth in Nineteenth-Century Germany

      • Frederick Gregory

      Pages 81-96

   3. Equivalence, Pragmatic Platonism, and Discovery of the Calculus

      • Skuli Sigurdsson

      Pages 97-116

4. The Aims and Foundations of Physical Science: The Cases of Electrical Physics, Psychophysics, and Physical Chemistry

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 117-117

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   2. The Training of German Research Physicist Heinrich Hertz

      • Jed Z. Buchwald

      Pages 119-145

   3. From Psychophysics to Phenomenalism: Mach and Hering on Color Vision

      • Richard L. Kremer

      Pages 147-173

   4. A Usable Past: Creating Disciplinary Space for Physical Chemistry

      • Diana Kormos Barkan

      Pages 175-202

5. Explanation and Discovery: The Claims of Chemistry, Physics, and Fortran

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 203-203

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   2. Physics and Chemistry: Commensurate or Incommensurate Sciences?

      • Mary Jo Nye

      Pages 205-224

   3. Fortran, Physics, and Human Nature

      • Peter Galison

      Pages 225-260

6. Back Matter

   Pages 261-278

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Modern physical science is constituted by specialized scientific fields rooted in experimental laboratory work and in rational and mathematical representations. Contemporary scientific explanation is rigorously differentiated from religious interpretation, although, to be sure, scientists sometimes do the philosophical work of interpreting the metaphysics of space, time, and matter. However, it is rare that either theologians or philosophers convincingly claim that they are doing the scientific work of physical scientists and mathematicians.
The rigidity of these divisions and differentiations is relatively new. Modern physical science was invented slowly and gradually through interactions of the aims and contents of mathematics, theology, and natural philosophy since the seventeenth century. In essays ranging in focus from seventeenth-century interpretations of heavenly comets to twentieth-century explanations of tracks in bubble chambers, ten historians of science demonstrate metaphysical and theological threads continuing to underpin the epistemology and practice of the physical sciences and mathematics, even while they became disciplinary specialties during the last three centuries. The volume is prefaced by tributes to Erwin N. Hiebert, whose teaching and scholarship have addressed and inspired attention to these issues.

• natural philosophy
• physical sciences
• probability
• science

• University of Oklahoma, Norman, USA

  Mary Jo Nye

• Brown University, Providence, USA

  Joan L. Richards

• University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA

  Roger H. Stuewer

Policies and ethics