THE FORGOTTEN JESUIT GENIUS OF DALMATIA

 

As often in such cases, when the name of the person around whom the entry is built is definitely unfamiliar to the reader, the question Why Boscovich? barges onto the stage before the curtain rises, but in this case it gets the bluntest possible answer: Read this entry!

Very curiously, my Webster’s Biographical Dictionary describes Boscovich as an “Italian mathematician, astronomer, and physicist.” (No mention of him being a philosopher, whereas later in this entry a reference source will introduce him as a philosopher, with no mention of his other credentials! The same source will also identify him as a Dalmatian, in fact, Nietzsche does that first in the Jenseits passage below.) The entry in Webster’s proceeds with the facts that Boscovich was born in Dalmatia, joined Jesuits (1725), taught in Rome (1740), Pavia, Milan; first in Italy to write in advocacy of Newton’s theories, advanced a molecular theory of matter (1758). The last part can, of course, be interpreted both as science and philosophy, mostly depending on the point of view of the interpreter.

But no matter whose interpretation it is, the fact remains that Boscovich was and remains today one of the most forgotten (and undeservedly so) geniuses of modern, post-Renaissance, history. Too bad that my very own Bertrand Russell makes no mention of him in his History of Western Philosophy...

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Forgotten indeed! I confess that had it not been for Nietzsche, I would not have known anything about this half-Dalmatian half-Italian mathematical, scientific, and philosophical genius, and the present entry would never have been written at all. Ruggiero Giuseppe /Roger Joseph/ Boscovich (1711-1787) is by no means a household name in the history of Western philosophy. But here is Nietzsche’s reference to him in Jenseits 12:

As for materialistic atomism, it is one of the best refuted theories there are, thanks chiefly to the Dalmatian Boscovich: he and Copernicus have been the greatest and most successful opponents of visual evidence, so far. For, as Copernicus has persuaded us to believe, contrary to all the senses, that the earth does not stand fast. Boscovich has taught us to abjure the belief in the last part of the earth that “stood fast”---the belief in substance, in matter, in the earth-residuum and particle-atom: this is the greatest triumph over the senses, that has been gained on earth so far.

Providing a footnote to this paragraph, Nietzsche’s learned translator and commentator Walter Kaufmann (1921-1980) quotes a minor academic source on the Dalmatian prodigy: Boscovich, an eighteenth-century Jesuit philosopher, somewhat out of the mainstream of science, had defined atoms only as centers of force, and not as particles of matter, in which powers somehow inhere. The reason why I am providing this piece of reference at all is because it identifies Boscovich only as a philosopher, which is understandable, because Nietzsche’s Jenseits paragraph above specifically points to Boscovich’s philosophical legacy.

While referring my reader to outside reference sources, to learn much more about Boscovich as a scientist, astronomer, mathematician, physicist, etc., as well as about the circumstances of his life, I should observe that he is credited by some, and not without a good reason, as the missing link between Isaac Newton and Einstein. Considering that more than a century and a half separate them, this connection cannot possibly be traced through actual science but rather through the philosophy of science, which unquestionably makes our Dalmatian genius a bona fide philosopher.

It is often noted by those who are familiar with the name of Boscovich, and ergo, with his theories, that as a devout Jesuit, he was allowed by the Catholic Church and by the Popes, who greatly valued the depth of his knowledge and expertise, to get away with his promotion of a radical atomic theory, previously banned by the Church, heresy-free, and thus opening limitless opportunities for scientists who, for very understandable reasons, did not wish to quarrel with Rome. The essence of his theory, which, as I said, floats in the border region of science and philosophy is that point-particles have spheres of influence around them that influence other point-particles. These spheres of influence could be called by the modern term field, and so on, and so forth. If we add to this the already mentioned fact that our Boscovich regarded the atoms (point-particles) as centers of force, rather than as particles of matter, we can see how that missing link claim (“from Newton to Einstein”) has actually come about.

What we cannot see, however, is why after Nietzsche and others had thus put a spotlight on Boscovich, he still remains the forgotten Jesuit genius of Dalmatia.