Bošković's theory of forces (Theoria philosophiae naturalis)
Teoría de las fuerzas de Bošković (Theoria philosophiae naturalis)
- Date
- 1758 · confidence high
- Place
- Vienna, Austria
- Credited to
- Ruđer Bošković
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
A theory that reduces matter to unextended points linked by a single law of force, attractive at long distances and repulsive at short ones. With it he explained why matter is impenetrable and stable without hard atoms.
First edition in Vienna (1758); the second, Venice (1763), is the most read. That it influenced Faraday and Kelvin is a common historians' reading, not a step-by-step documented chain. Bošković was born in Dubrovnik and worked in Rome and Milan.
What it led to
- the idea of a force field, taken up by Faraday and Kelvin
- a dynamic physics of matter against contact mechanism