Vrije Universiteit Brussel Out of Newton’s shadow: an examination of Willem Jacob ’s Gravesande’s scientific methodology Van Besouw, Jip Publication date: 2017 Document Version: Accepted author manuscript Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Van Besouw, J. (2017). Out of Newton’s shadow: an examination of Willem Jacob ’s Gravesande’s scientific methodology. 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Sep. 2021 Out of Newton’s shadow: an examination of Willem Jacob ’s Gravesande’s scientific methodology Jip van Besouw Dissertation submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and Moral Sciences at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel 4 October 2017 Members of the doctoral jury: Prof. dr. Steffen Ducheyne (promotor) Prof. dr. Jean Paul Van Bendegem Prof. dr. Gustaaf Cornelis Dr. Anne-Lise Rey Dr. Ad Maas Prof. dr. Frans van Lunteren Prof. dr. Niccolò Guicciardini 1 Acknowledgements There are many people that have contributed directly or indirectly to this doctoral dissertation. First of all, I would like to thank Steffen Ducheyne, my promoter, for his guidance throughout the four years that I have spent working at this dissertation, and for having so much confidence in my abilities as a researcher. Not unimportantly, I want to thank Steffen for giving me the chance to work on his research project, funded by the Research Foundation – Flanders (project G002913N). Second, I would like to thank Jeroen van Dongen, who supervised both my bachelor and master’s theses at Utrecht University. Without Jeroen’s counsel and recommendation, I would in all likelihood never have started such a project as writing a doctoral dissertation at all. During the fall of 2015, I have spent several months at Museum Boerhaave in Leiden, a research stay that has given me much inspiration. I wish to thank the entire staff of the museum for generous help, for keeping me company during these months, and for allowing me to uncover the details of the many scientific instruments designed by ’s Gravesande that are presented in the museum. Curators Tiemen Cocquyt and Ad Maas, who share my enthusiasm for ’s Gravesande, in particular have pushed my research forward by pointing at previously unstudied documents, instruments, and other pieces of evidence, for which I wish to express my gratitude. Several people have made a significant contribution to my research by discussing particular subject with me in detail. Among those people are George E. Smith, whose guidance has been essential to my understanding of eighteenth-century mechanics and therefore to chapters six and seven of this dissertation, and Anne-Lise Rey, who has in particular pushed me on getting the context of ’s Gravesande’s epistemology right and on focusing on particular agreements between authors rather than on vague influences, and whose article referred to as ‘forthcoming’ in the bibliography, has provided me with helpful insights since 2014. Other people that I would like to thank for constructive discussions and helpful comments, in alphabetical order, include Patrick J. Connolly, Fokko Jan Dijksterhuis, Niccolò Guicciardini, Andrea Sangiacomo, Kees-Jan Schilt, Eric Schliesser, Marco Storni, Andrea Strazzoni, and Frans van Lunteren. Besides that, I have received many thought- provoking questions and stumbled on many new insights during the conferences, workshops, and seminars I attended. I am grateful to all those who have helped me in this respect. My gratitude also goes to all those who have worked on ’s Gravesande in the past. Kees de Pater, in particular, has provided helpful starting points for this dissertation with his translations and structural summaries of ’s Gravesande’s work, published in De Pater (1988), and I want to thank Kees de Pater for his continuing interest in my research as well. Although I have referred to ’s Gravesande’s original works throughout this dissertation for reasons of precision, much of my preliminary work has relied on translations, not only by De Pater, but also by ’s Gravesande’s contemporaries such as Desaguliers, Allamand, and De Joncourt. Such translations, as well as digital tools such as online translation services, reproductions of 2 early modern publications, and text mining functions such as optical character recognition have been elementary to my project, and have of course not always been available to previous researchers. Some parts of this dissertation have appeared in print elsewhere during the process of writing this dissertation. A large part of chapter two has appeared in a slightly different form as “The impeccable credentials of an untrained philosopher: Willem Jacob ’s Gravesande’s career before his Leiden professorship, 1688-1717”, Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science, 70, pp. 231-249, published by the Royal Society. Parts of chapters six and most of chapter seven are based on “The wedge and the vis viva controversy: how concepts of force influenced the practice of early eighteenth-century mechanics”. Archive for History of Exact Sciences, 71, pp. 109-156, published by Springer. I have used various parts of the article published as “’s Gravesande on the application of mathematics in physics and philosophy” in Noctua: Rivisita internazionale di storia della filosofia, 4, pp. 17- 55, in chapters three to six. I thank the editors and publishers of these journals for granting me permission to reuse these parts. I have received detailed comments on particular parts of this dissertation, in various forms, from Steffen Ducheyne, Ad Maas, Anne-Lise Rey, George E. Smith, Niccolò Guicciardini, Yannick Van den Abbeel, and Pieter Present, as well as from my brother Bram van Besouw—who has been central to my research in many other ways—and my father Frans van Besouw, and from the referees and editors of pieces that I have submitted to various journals throughout my research on this project. Steffen has naturally read almost every letter of this dissertation. His help, as well as that of Pieter, has been essential in translating passages from Latin. If these translations are somewhat cumbersome, the blame should be on me and not on Pieter and Steffen. I have intentionally chosen to approximate the structure and jargon of the originals in the translations. For reasons of reproducibility, I have attached the originals of all quoted passages in the footnotes. I also want to thank my colleagues at the Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science for their support and company during the past four years and Nigel Vinckier, with whom I have shared my office over the past two years, in particular. Although my research interests differ somewhat from those of the colleagues that I see on a daily basis, Nigel’s abilities as a mathematician have saved me from confusion at multiple points. Finally, I want to thank all my loved ones, friends and family, not for contributing directly to my dissertation, but for being there for me when I need personal support, for their concern with my general well- being, and for showing me often enough that a doctoral dissertation is only a doctoral dissertation. 3 Samenvatting van de dissertatie Deze dissertatie bespreekt de wetenschappelijke methodologie van Willem Jacob ’s Gravesande (1688-1742). Alhoewel het geweten is dat ’s Gravesande een belangrijke rol speelde in de fysica van de achttiende eeuw, zijn er weinig gedetailleerde studies over zijn werk beschikbaar. Het bestaande beeld van ’s Gravesande is dat zijn fysica, en vooral zijn wetenschappelijke methodologie, grotendeels gericht was op het begrijpelijk maken van het werk van Isaac Newton (1643-1727), een beeld dat ’s Gravesande voor een groot deel zelf gecreëerd heeft. Recente studies hebben echter uitgewezen dat dit beeld niet geheel correct is. Bepaalde aspecten die van groot belang waren voor Newton methodologie werden gemist, genegeerd of anders geïnterpreteerd door ’s Gravesande. Deze studie richt zich daarom op het werk zelf, in de eerste plaats zonder steeds een vergelijking met Newton te maken. In het eerste hoofdstuk wordt besproken hoe men om te beginnen zoiets als een ‘wetenschappelijke methodologie’ moet bestuderen. Om te beginnen geef ik aan hoe het niet moet, en hoe het beeld van ’s Gravesande als ‘newtoniaan’ ons begrip van zijn werk heeft vermoeilijkt. Ik beargumenteer dat vergelijkingen met Newton alleen zinvol zijn wanneer die gemaakt worden in een breder vergelijkend kader, een kader waarin ook andere wetenschappers uit ’s Gravesandes intellectuele context worden opgenomen. Daarnaast volgt een kleine bespreking van ’s Gravesandes wetenschappelijke instrumenten, en hoe een studie van deze instrumenten kan helpen on ’s Gravesandes werk beter te begrijpen. Hoofdstuk twee geeft vervolgens een biografisch overzicht van het leven en werk van ’s Gravesande. Een dergelijk overzicht helpt om het werk van ’s Gravesande beter te contextualiseren, maar overstijgt dat doel ook door de mythe weg te nemen die stelt dat ’s Gravesandes wetenschappelijke carrière is begonnen na en als gevolg van een toevallige ontmoeting met Newton Hoofdstukken drie tot en met vijf concentreren zich op Gravesandes filosofie. In volgorde worden zijn epistemologie, zijn metafysica en zijn gedachten over wetenschappelijke methodologie besproken.