This paper aims at understanding the concept of convention in mechanics as a notion transferred from the field of jurisprudence. This enables us to clarify it as a new epistemic category having a pertinent role in the transformation of mechanics in the nineteenth century. Such understanding permits a separation from linguistic and arbitrary conventions, thus highlighting its epistemic features and not transforming fundamental principles into mere arbitrary agreements. After addressing the main references in the literature discussing the role of convention in mechanics, we analyze its classical use as a concept originating from law. Then we explain its use by Carl G. Jacobi, Ferdinand F. Reech, and J. Henri Poincaré. Here we also show how their uses conform to the features analyzed regarding conventions in jurisprudence. Finally, we try to explain how the use of this concept, among other factors, contributed to the transformation of mechanics.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
Craig Fraser;
Michiyo Nakane;
(2023)
Canonical transformations from Jacobi to Whittaker
(/isis/citation/CBB563006808/)
Chapter
João Príncipe;
(2014)
Henri Poincaré: The Status of Mechanical Explanations and the Foundations of Statistical Mechanics
(/isis/citation/CBB035763250/)
Chapter
Lutzen, Jesper;
(2006)
Images and Conventions: Kantianism, Empiricism, and Conventionalism in Hertz's and Poincaré's Philosophies of Space and Mechanics
(/isis/citation/CBB000741576/)
Article
Daub, Edward E.;
(1978)
Sources for Clausius' entropy concept: Reech and Rankine
(/isis/citation/CBB000020586/)
Chapter
Luigi Lacchè;
(2020)
La “Società dei Giureconsulti”. Per uno studio su congressi, azione collettiva e “canone eclettico” tra Restaurazione e Risorgimento
(/isis/citation/CBB415487936/)
Article
Daude, Olivier;
(2011)
Le pragmaticisme et la question du témoignage
(/isis/citation/CBB001024474/)
Article
Bracco, Christian;
Provost, Jean-Pierre;
(2013)
Les points de vue de Poincaré sur la “mécanique nouvelle” et leurs rapports à l'enseignement et à sa pratique scientifique
(/isis/citation/CBB001213936/)
Article
Bracco, Christian;
Provost, Jean-Pierre;
(2009)
De l'électromagnétisme à la mécanique: Le rôle de l'action dans le Mémoire de Poincaré de 1905
(/isis/citation/CBB000954549/)
Article
Cattani, Carlo;
Laserra, Ettore;
(1994)
The Italian controversy on the composition of rigid motions
(/isis/citation/CBB000045142/)
Book
Cotterrell, Roger B. M.;
(1999)
Émile Durkheim: Law in a Moral Domain
(/isis/citation/CBB000500068/)
Article
Martin, Thierry;
(2011)
Introduction
(/isis/citation/CBB001024470/)
Book
Susanna L. Blumenthal;
(2016)
Law and the Modern Mind: Consciousness and Responsibility in American Legal Culture
(/isis/citation/CBB113405995/)
Article
Andrea Graus;
(2018)
Mysticism in the Courtroom in 19th-Century Europe
(/isis/citation/CBB714681925/)
Article
Courtney E Thompson;
(2019)
A Propensity to Murder: Phrenology in Antebellum Medico-Legal Theory and Practice
(/isis/citation/CBB910393573/)
Book
Faigman, David L.;
(2004)
Laboratory of Justice: The Supreme Court's 200-Year Struggle to Integrate Science and the Law
(/isis/citation/CBB000641661/)
Book
Bach, Thomas;
Maatsch, Jonas;
Rasche, Ulrich;
(2008)
“Gelehrte” Wissenschaft: Das Vorlesungsprogramm der Universität Jena um 1800
(/isis/citation/CBB001020619/)
Book
Alberto Cogliati;
(2024)
La geometria non euclidea. Una breve storia dall’antichità a Poincaré
(/isis/citation/CBB276091257/)
Chapter
Janet Folina;
(2014)
Poincaré and the Invention of Convention
(/isis/citation/CBB627819901/)
Article
Andersson, K.G.;
(1994)
Poincaré's discovery of homoclinic points
(/isis/citation/CBB000064501/)
Article
Fortino, Mirella;
(1996)
Esperienza e ragione nel convenzionalismo geometrico di Henri Poincaré
(/isis/citation/CBB000072643/)
Be the first to comment!