When realism made a difference: The constitution of matter and its conceptual enigmas in late 19th century physics
Introduction
In late 19th century physics, especially in the German-speaking countries, a long and persistent debate about what we now call theoretical entities unfolded.1 Some physicists (including Ernst Mach, Wilhelm Ostwald and Gustav Kirchhoff) sought to eliminate from physical theory all elements that they considered mere hypothetical constructs. They advocated physics without pictures, which meant that descriptions in terms of directly measurable quantities were in principle preferable. Others argued that physics without pictures was impossible, but conceded that physical pictures were not in exact correspondence to nature, but would only bear a partial resemblance to the phenomena. (This line of thought was elaborated by Heinrich Hertz and Ludwig Boltzmann and is related to earlier ideas by Hermann von Helmholtz.)
These controversies are generally regarded as foreshadowing the scientific realism debate in 20th century philosophy of science (cf. Nagel, 1961, pp. 118–119; Niiniluoto, 2002, Chapter 1; Popper, 1956, to name just a few prominent examples). This appraisal often explicitly includes those parts of the debate that were concerned with atomism and the argumentative efforts of atomism's most fervent advocate, Ludwig Boltzmann (see, e.g., Blackmore, 1999; Nye, 1976). My aim in this paper is to highlight a side of the debate which Boltzmann and others were involved in that is seldom discussed, viz., the concerns about the conceptual consistency of atomism. I want to accentuate the fact that an important concern for at least some of the participants of the debate was the legitimacy in principle of the use of atomistic conceptions in physics. I will analyze this controversy as a debate about legitimate concrete goals of fundamental research in physics. This disagreement over goals was perceived as immediately relevant to concrete research programs. While this analysis points to a certain continuity with the later realism debate, which has also been analyzed as a controversy over the aims of science, it also permits the diagnosis of some significant differences, as I will try to show in the concluding section.
Section snippets
Puzzles of atomism: Emil Du Bois-Reymond
Is it a worthwhile aim of physics to search for ultimate explanations of phenomena in terms of the ultimate elements of matter, the atoms? In late 19th century Germany, many articulated skepticism about such a goal. Thus in 1871, Hermann von Helmholtz remarked:
On atoms in theoretical physics, Sir William Thomson aptly says that assuming them can explain no property of bodies that has not been attributed to the atoms themselves beforehand. In assenting to this statement, I do not want to
Intellectual division of labor: Heinrich Hertz
Instead of exploring the consistency challenge itself or its origins further, I will now concentrate on some of its repercussions with physicists who emphasized atomism's explanatory potential. One of these was Heinrich Hertz, who took up the consistency challenge in a lecture course on the constitution of matter given at the University of Kiel in 1884. Following a list of the explanatory successes of atomism in chemistry and kinetic theory, he addresses the possibility of philosophical
Only a picture: Ludwig Boltzmann (I)
Hertz's stance might be understood as an evasion of the consistency challenge that is achieved by giving up the aim of providing an unequivocal clarification and explanation of the constitution of matter as an essential part of the atomistic research program. Another physicist who at times adopted such a stance was Ludwig Boltzmann. In the middle of the second volume of his Lectures on the Principles of Mechanics, we find the following remark:
If I say that the mechanical pictures can be capable
Puzzles of anti-atomism: Boltzmann (II)
When Boltzmann had become Mach's successor in Vienna, he gave a lecture course on natural philosophy.10 It contains a highly original defense of atomism that starts with the presentation of a mechanical puzzle (Boltzmann 1906, pp. 92–93, 199–200). He does not indicate any specific sources of this puzzle, but he does mention that
When realism made a difference
There can be no doubt that for Boltzmann an important goal of fundamental research in physics was to find the correct answer to “the query whether matter is to be conceived as continuous or as composed of discrete constituents (of very many but not mathematically speaking infinitely many individuals)” (Boltzmann, 1904, p. 163), as he put it in his 1904 address to the Scientific Congress in St. Louis. He goes on to point out: “This precise question is of too much topical interest to science to
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