On Boscovich's Theory

Abstract

WITHOUT accepting Boscovich's fundamental doctrine that the ultimate atoms of matter are points endowed each with inertia and with mutual attractions or repulsions dependent on mutual distances, and that all the properties of matter are due to equilibrium of these forces, and to motions, or changes of motion produced by them when they are not balanced; we can learn something towards an understanding of the real molecular structure of matter, and of some of its thermodynamic properties, by consideration of the statical and kinetic problems which it suggests. Hooke's exhibition of the forms of crystals by piles of globes, Naviers's and Poisson's theory of the elasticity of solids, Maxwell's and Clausius's work in the kinetic theory of gases, and Tait's more recent work on the same subject—all developments of Boscovich's theory pure and simple—amply justify this statement.