R. J. Boscovich’s achievement in Natural Philosophy for the development of modern particle physics

Tomislav Petković

University of Zagreb, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing (FER), Department of Applied Physics, Croatia

Abstract

R. J. Boscovich (1711-1787) was the first in history of science to combine Newton, Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz’s method of thought in the middle of the 18th century before the Maxwell-Einstein era of physics, synthesising them into his new method of thought on Nature. His method may be expressed by the epistemological formula more geometrico sive mathematico – more rationali – more empirico – more theologico, as the four fundaments of science, philosophy and religion of his time. Boscovich’s A Theory of Natural Philosophy on points-atoms as the ultimate building-blocks of matter is based on a single law of forces existing in nature. The Theory itself has been fundamental for the modern scientific picture of the world and the basic concepts of nature to date, due to the structure of nature and the phenomenology of particles it brings. Boscovich is the father of the original pictorial representation of the atom (dynamism hypothesis), important both for the modern concept of subatomic particles (from electrons, protons and neutrons to quarks) of the 20th century, and the predicted and expected new particles and objects of the 21st century.

N. Bohr, W. Heisenberg and L. Lederman did indeed praise the role of Boscovich’s Theory in physics (science). However, it was Richard P. Feynman who showed keen interest in Boscovich’s atomism, having accepted it as his metaphysical credo 200 years later. Using an effective epistemic approach, the author links Boscovich’s ingenious apperception of points and particles with Feynman more than two centuries later and his ingenious and precise parton-quark physics of the Standard Model. The scientific-philosophical compatibility of Boscovich’s theory with E. Rutherford was put into the limelight by Rutherford’s paper from 1911, when he discovered the atomic nucleus and the nuclear model of the atom, by way of three statements: the atomic nucleus as Boscovich’s point – a point source of Coulomb force, an α particle is also a point, and the impact parameter in an encounter between an α particle and a gold nucleus has the character of distance resembling the one in the Boscovich’s curve. The most interesting legacy of the Boscovich’s tree of repulsion and attraction which lies chiefly in the tree-level picture of nuclear forces in contemporary low-energy physics will be shown in presentation.

Boscovich’s legacy, based on his epoch-making work A Theory of Natural Philosophy (Vienna 1758, and Venice 1763), is particularly important due to the current epistemic challenges of the ‘new high-energy physics’, as well as for the global interferences between contemporary science and culture.