Roger Boscovich, S.J. (1711–1787)

Abstract

THOUGH the author speaks (p. 64) of “Newton and other scientists of the time, including Boscovich”as though they were roughly contemporary, this is clearly misleading ; for Newton was nearly seventy when Boscovich was born at Dubrovnik (Ragusa) in Dalmatia. This means that one was a man of the seventeenth, the other of the eighteenth century. Similarly, when at the outset of his “Theoria Philosophiae Naturalis”, Boscovich asserts that his own system is midway between that of Leibniz and that of Newton, it may be suspected that this is true in the sense that, but for the matter of dates, both would have expressed equal disagreement with his ideas. It is, in fact, hard to understand what he did mean, for the particles of his system never came into mutual contact and they are not subject to the action of a surrounding medium. Yet Boscovich emphatically denied the possibility of action at a distance. Roger Boscovich, S.J. (1711–1787) Forerunner of Modern Physical Theories. By H. V. Gill. Pp. xviii + 76. (Dublin: M. H. Gill and Son, Ltd., 1941.) 7s. 6d.