Listing of Sessions and Abstracts of Papers - History of Science ...

They allowed him to propose a new metaphysics with which he hoped not only to shake the beliefs
promoted by the Anglican Church but also to undermine the oppressive policies of the English government
at home and abroad.
Evans, James
E-mail Address: jcevans@ups.edu
Gravitation and Generation: Hypothesis in the Thought of Georges-Louis Le Sage and Charles
Bonnet
Georges-Louis Le Sage (1724-1803) was the inventor of a mechanical explanation of Newton’s law
of gravitation. Le Sage postulated a sea of ultramundane corpuscles, streaming in all directions and
characterized by minute mass, great velocity, and complete inelasticity. Mostly these corpuscles just
pass through gross bodies such as apples or planets, but a few are absorbed, leading to all the phenomena
of attraction. In a voluminous correspondence with nearly all the savants of the day, Le Sage constantly
reshaped his arguments for his system in order to appeal to metaphysicians, mechanicians and
Newtonians of several varieties. Most of his correspondents recoiled with repugnance. In the preface to
his widely read Contemplation of Nature, Charles Bonnet (1720-1793) responded to attacks on his own
earlier work on generation and to complaints that he hypothesized too freely. Bonnet mentioned two
great enigmas that physicists and natural historians had so far been unable to penetrate: the cause of
weight and the mystery of generation. And here he inserted a sympathetic reference to Le Sage’s attempt
to find the true cause of gravity. In Bonnet, then, Le Sage found a kindred spirit--a fellow
Genevan who felt one had to take risks to infer the order of nature behind the facts of observation, and
who felt that he had been unfairly criticized for doing so, that he had been lumped together with vain
and careless systematizers. In this paper I will examine Le Sage’s defense of the method of hypothesis
and the reactions it provoked in his correspondents, including Charles Bonnet. Was Le Sage’s approach
to demonstration in physics a radically new epistemology, as some have claimed, or was it merely
opportunistic and out of step with its time? Do the deepest mysteries require a special method?
Finkelstein, Gabriel
E-mail Address: Gabriel.Finkelstein@cudenver.edu
"The more civilized a nation is, the smaller the rooms": Daily Life through the Eyes of Emil du
Bois-Reymond
Emil du Bois-Reymond’s innovations in electrophysiology and essays on science and culture earned
him great celebrity in Imperial Germany, so much so that his photograph hung for sale in Berlin shop
windows alongside those of the Royal Family. Yet beyond public notoriety du Bois-Reymond also led a
rich and interesting private life, one that he documented extensively in dozens of letters sent to his
English fiancée Jeannette Claude. Precisely because she was foreign, du Bois-Reymond took great pains
to describe their common future in Berlin. This remarkable portrait of daily life provides an almost
anthropological account of the workaday world of nineteenth century Germany science.
Fitzpatrick, Anne
E-mail Address: Afitzpatrick@lanl.gov
The Next Big Simulation: Computers in the Nuclear Arms Race
The construction of specialized experimental machines for science research is often carried out on a
different time scale than the development of scientific problems these devices are intended to solve.
While American and Western European scientists usually justify building newer, bigger scientific machines
in terms of national security or other long-term benefits to society, these projects are often completed
only after many years. While there is no doubt that scientific practice has become dependent on a