The received view of the Scientific Revolution is that it was completed with
the publication of Isaac Newton's (1642-1727) {em Philosophiae Naturalis
Principia Mathematica} in 1687. Work on mechanics in the century or more following was thought to be merely a working out the mathematical details of
Newton's program, in particular of
translating his mechanics from its synthetic expression into analytic form. I
show that the mechanics of Leonhard Euler (1707--1782) and Joseph-Louis
Lagrange (1736--1813) did not begin with Newton's Three Laws. They provided
their own beginning principles and interpretations of the relation between
mathematical description and nature. Functional relations among the quantified
properties of bodies were interpreted as basic mechanical connections between
those bodies. Equilibrium played an important role in explaining the behavior
of physical systems understood mechanically. Some behavior was revealed to be
an equilibrium condition; other behavior was understood as a variation from
equilibrium. Implications for scientific explanation are then drawn from
these historical considerations, specifically an alternative account of
mechanical explanation and unification. Trying to cast mechanical
explanations (of the kind considered here) as Kitcher-style argument schema
fails to distinguish legitimate from spurious explanations. Consideration of
the mechanical analogies lying behind the schema are required.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-07282007-154439 |
| Date | 20 September 2007 |
| Creators | Hepburn, Brian Spence |
| Contributors | Paolo Palmieri, Gordon Belot, James McGuire, John Earman, Peter Machamer, Frank Tabakin |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-07282007-154439/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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