著者

有賀 暢迪

出版者

日本科学史学会

雑誌

科学史研究. 第II期 (ISSN:00227692)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.51, no.263, pp.160-169, 2012-09-26

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In his classical article "Eighteenth-century attempts to resolve the vis viva controversy" (1965), T. L. Hankins gave a reassessment of the vis viva controversy, dispute about the Cartesian (mv) and Leibnizian (mv^2) measures of "force." Contrary to traditional views, Hankins's and others' works have established that it was not d'Alembert's Traite de dynamique (1743) which put an end to the controversy. But then, when and how did it end? The present article argues that in the middle of the eighteenth-century, some philosophers or mathematicians tried to dissolve the controversy by rejecting its very premise: the concept of "force of bodies in motion." After briefly discussing the popularity of this concept in the vis viva controversy, I will examine claims and thoughts of three personae. D'Alembert's ambition to build the system of mechanics with highest certainty led him to abandon the idea of force in bodies, because it was too "obscure" and too "metaphysical" to serve as the basis. In a similar manner Maupertuis complained about the obscurity of that idea, and with his original principle he aimed at substituting "conservation" of force for "least" action. With regard to Euler, he insisted that force could not be attributed to individual bodies but to their relations, and that force was derived from the nature of bodies such as inertia or impenetrability. Thus it was by rejecting "force of bodies in motion" that the vis viva controversy began to end; not by, as is often said, realizing that both measures were valid.