History as a Tool for Natural Science: How Ernst Mach Applied Historical Methods to Physics (2022)
ten Hagen, Sjang L. (Author)
Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences
Volume: 52
Issue: 1
Pages: 40-79
Historical methods have long been put to use in the making of natural knowledge. In this article, I examine the use of historical methods by nineteenth-century physicists, focusing on the Austrian researcher Ernst Mach in particular. I argue that Mach applied methods characteristic of the then-dominant historical and philological disciplines to his own discipline of physics. He construed history as a tool for the physicist. On the basis of a study of his notebooks and correspondence with the chemist-turned-historian Emil Wohlwill, I explain what he sought to achieve by means of this tool, and reconstruct the practices characterizing his historical research. These practices included the reading, ordering, and comparison of textual sources. Moreover, Mach appropriated the historical-philological method of source criticism. I show that prominent fellow physicists of Mach, including Johann Poggendorff and Hermann von Helmholtz, made use of similar historical methods, even though their aims were different. Together, the cases of these history-writing physicists illustrate how history and natural science continued to intertwine in a time of increasing disciplinary fragmentation.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Book
Blackmore, John T.;
(2010)
Ernst Mach's Graz (1864--1867): Where Much Science and Philosophy Were Developed
(/isis/citation/CBB001024110/)
Article
Azuela, Luz Fernanda;
Erick Villanueva-Villaseñor;
(2021)
Illustration within Informal Geological Communication during the Golden Age of Geology (1788-1840) – Examples from the respective correspondence and archives of Henry De La Beche and William Buckland
(/isis/citation/CBB844495546/)
Book
John Preston;
(2021)
Interpreting Mach: Critical Essays
(/isis/citation/CBB070616818/)
Article
Pietro Gori;
(2021)
Ernst Mach’s Contribution to the Philosophy of Science in Light of Mary B. Hesse’s Postempiricism
(/isis/citation/CBB711827914/)
Book
Snobelen, Stephen;
(2013)
The Newton Project Canada
(/isis/citation/CBB001452000/)
Chapter
Zanarini, Gianni;
(2001)
Hermann von Helmholtz and Ernst Mach on Musical Consonance
(/isis/citation/CBB000102702/)
Article
Boi, Luciano;
(1996)
Les géométries non euclidiennes, le problème philosophique de l'espace et la conception transcendantale: Helmholtz et Kant, les néo-kantiens, Einstein, Poincaré et Mach
(/isis/citation/CBB000072476/)
Chapter
Heidelberger, Michael;
(1997)
Beziehungen zwischen Sinnesphysiologie und Philosophie im 19. Jahrhundert
(/isis/citation/CBB000072987/)
Thesis
Hui, Alexandra;
(2008)
Hearing Sound as Music: Psychophysical Studies of Sound Sensation and the Music Culture of Germany, 1860--1910
(/isis/citation/CBB001561163/)
Article
John A. Schuster;
(2019)
Pitfalls and Opportunities of Contextual Explanation: The Case of Isaac Beeckman’s Invention of the Mechanical Philosophy
(/isis/citation/CBB948023502/)
Article
Rowlinson, J. S.;
(2009)
The Border between Physics and Chemistry
(/isis/citation/CBB000954652/)
Book
Claudio Forner;
Valentina Gallo;
Sabine Schwarze;
Corrado Viola;
(2017)
Le carte false. Epistolarità fittizia nel Settecento italiano
(/isis/citation/CBB601170491/)
Chapter
Arcangelo Rossi;
(2016)
Cosimo De Giorgi and the development of natural sciences in the South of Italy
(/isis/citation/CBB480886065/)
Article
D'Agostino, Salvo;
(2005)
Il difficile ricupero dell'Anschaulichkeit di Goethe nell'opera di Helmholtz
(/isis/citation/CBB000610526/)
Book
Hiebert, Erwin N.;
(2014)
The Helmholtz Legacy in Physiological Acoustics
(/isis/citation/CBB001551096/)
Article
Pantalony, David;
(2005)
Rudolph Koenig's Workshop of Sound: Instruments, Theories, and the Debate over Combination Tones
(/isis/citation/CBB000500117/)
Chapter
Cahan, David;
(2005)
Hermann von Helmholtz und die Ausgestaltung der amerikanischen Physik im Gilded Age
(/isis/citation/CBB001022592/)
Chapter
Marco Buzzoni;
(2018)
Ernst Mach interprete di Pierre Duhem. Valore e limiti della sperimentazione mentale
(/isis/citation/CBB306281511/)
Chapter
Erik C. Banks;
(2018)
The Case for Mach's Neutral Monism
(/isis/citation/CBB571671358/)
Article
Richard Staley;
(2021)
Sensory studies, or when physics was psychophysics: Ernst Mach and physics between physiology and psychology, 1860–71
(/isis/citation/CBB206423864/)
Be the first to comment!