Speculative Truth: Henry Cavendish, Natural Philosophy, and the Rise of Modern Theoretical Science by Russell McCormmach (PDF)

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With a never-before published paper by Lord Henry Cavendish, as well as a biography on him, this book offers a fascinating discourse on the rise of scientific attitudes and ways of knowing. A pioneering British physicist in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Cavendish was widelyconsidered to be the first full-time scientist in the modern sense. Through the lens of this unique thinker and writer, this book is about the birth of modern science.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review “The hundreds of references in the notes and the extensive bibliography are a researcher’s paradise…[H]ighly recommended.”–CHOICE About the Author Russell McCormmach is at University of Oregon (Emeritus).

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐The 18th century English aristocrat and natural philosopher Henry Cavendish is renowned for his exacting experimental researches. Less well-known is that he is the author of two magisterial mathematical theories on the two major experimental fields of natural philosophy, electricity and heat. His electrical theory preceded his extensive electrical experiments, many of which were confirmations of predictions from the theory. His theory of heat came at the end of his extensive experiments on heat, showing them to be instances of a great generalizing law of natural science. This law was the conservation of energy, kinetic and potential, including the energy of heat, originating in the forces of the particles that constitute matter. Cavendish published his electrical theory. He did not publish his theory of heat. “Heat,” the manuscript, is a relatively recent addition to his scientific papers. Cavendish wrote and rewrote “Heat” with the clear intention of publishing it, but for reasons that are less clear, he withheld its publication. It would not be before the middle of the 19th century that the complete law of conservation of energy including heat would be derived from a mathematical theory, following the same line of reasoning as Cavendish’s. “Heat” is significant for the history of science for two reasons. One reason is what it tells us about Henry Cavendish: it completes the record of the work of this remarkable investigator. The other reason is what it tells us about physical science in the late 18th century: from within the body of knowledge, methods, objectives, and publication practices of natural philosophy, Cavendish produced a work that would later be recognized as theoretical physics, a field of vast power of unlocking the workings of nature. McCormmach’s book Speculative Truth shows how Cavendish did it. It lays out the relevant features of natural philosophy, and it offers an incisive analysis of Cavendish’s researches leading to, and including, “Heat.” The book concludes with the first publication of Cavendish’s manuscript, and in this respect, it is a major addendum to the two-volume edition of Cavendish’s scientific papers published by Cambridge University Press.

⭐I love scientific histories and biographies. While this is a fairly thorough reference, the first third is basically a history of Natural Philosophy and the last third a reproduction of Cavendish’ work on heat. Tucked in between is a nice biography, although written rather dryly. I learned some things from this book, but it one of the oddest and most fascinating characters in the history of science was presented like a Ph. D. thesis. I have no doubt Mr. McCormmach is the world’s authority on Cavendish, but his book would be vastly improved if he had followed Twain’s suggestion of striking out every other word. It would be more aptly titled “An Overlong Discussion of Natural Philosophy with a few notes about Henry Cavendish”.

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