RATIONAL CONTINUUM MECHANICS AND METAPHYSICAL ATOMISM VS. CONTINUISM Val Dusek Valdusek@aol.

com University of New Hampshire Philosophy Dept. Durham N H 03824 USA There is a tradition of continuist metaphysics (in which the real is rad ically continuous). This tradition began with the early Greek, Presocratic phil osopher, Anaxagoras, who wrote "things are not cut off from one another with a hatchet." Anaxagoras believed that substances were indefinitely divisible and each substance contained some greater or smaller proportion of each of the many kinds of things in the universe. Anax agoras referred to the ultimate infinitesimal elements of things as "seeds." Later, the Greeks puzzled over the paradoxes of the mathematical dimensi onless point in geometry. Zeno produced one paradox concerning the construction of a finite extended line from unextended points (referred to as Zeno's paradox of metrical extension by Adolf Grnbaum). Aristotle had, for the most part, worked with a continuous theory of mat ter as a kind of undifferentiated stuff. In one chemical passage, he did briefly refer to what was later called the doctr ine of "minima" and some medieval Arabic and Christian commentators developed atomic theories from this. However , the main spirit of the Aristotelian conception of matter was of an indefinitely divisible continuum. Aristotle did not believe in actual infinities. Furthermore, he rejected the conception of a line as made up of an actual infini ty of points, concerning which Zeno had earlier constructed his paradox of metrical extension. Rather, Aristotle concei ved of the continuum as indefinitely divisible (very much in the spirit of L. E. J. Brouwer's intuitionistic concepti on of the continuum in twentieth-century mathematics). In the early modern period, there was of course the very important reviv al of Democritean atomism by Gassendi, Boyle, and others. However, there was also an important development o f conceptions of the continuum. Descartes fudged the issue in a sense, because he had a conception of a space fi lled with matter (a plenum), however, he also believed in atoms. Since there could be no empty space between the edge s of the atoms, the aether or finest matter, which filled these interstices, was indefinitely divisible. As to the mathematical nature of the continuum, Descartes treatment was quite inadequate. Despite the brilliance of his analytical geometry, he evidently believed that there was no p roblem in treating the continuum as composed of a set of discrete, individual points. This inadequate treatment of the continuum was one aspect of Descartes, which Leibniz seized upon to criticize and correct. Leibniz made the so-called Principle of Continuity or Law of Continuity a central feature of his natural philosophy. For Leibniz, there was, at least in principle, a continuous gradati on between any two sorts of things. Space and time were continuous. Matter was continuous, as was motion. Leibniz, who was with Newton the coinventor of the calculus (about which there was a heated priority dispute in whi ch Newton packed an allegedly neutral jury and secretly wrote their decision wrongly accusing Leibniz of plagiarism) m ade mathematical continuity a central conception of his natural philosophy. Indeed, Leibniz's highly deterministic physical universe was based on fu nctions, which were perfectly smooth.

Given Leibniz's claim that such functions were infinitely differentiable had Lei bniz known complex analysis (analysis involving the square root of minus one, or i, the imaginary number), Leibniz's f unctions preprogramming in the Divine Mind the monads, which made up the universe would have been "analytic." They wo uld have been "analytic" both in the logical sense (in so far as God could perform infinite sequences of logical analysis) and "analytic" in the mathematical sense of being not only infinitely smooth but also representable by algebraic functions. Leibniz returned again and again to the "labyrinth of the continuum." H e did not take a literal "Platonistic", realistic attitude towards the mathematical points, which make up the continuum. Rather, he took a "nominalistic" attitude towards the continuum. That is, he treated the mathematical analysis o f the continuum of the points as a formal exercise. There is an actual infinity of real monads, "metaphysical points," at the level of ultimate reality, the metaphysical realm. But space and time are "well founded phenomena" (phenomena bene fundata) insofar as relations are not fundamentally real and are derivatives of the qualities or properties (i n this case the perspectival perceptions) of monads. The relativity of space and time divests space and time of ultimate, me taphysical reality, and thus the mathematics of space-time can be treated in a nominalistic manner. Monads, even if infinite in number, are not in space and time. They make up space and time via the relations derivative from t heir qualities. Thus the spatiotemporal continuum is not relevant to monads. Leibniz's differential calculus (the mathematics of rates of change) use d a different notation than his contemporary rival, Newton. In discussing the rate of change of a function f(x) , Newton simply denoted it by f'(x), and similarly the rate of change of a rate of change, or the rate of change of a slo pe was denoted by f"(x). This notation is sometimes used in physics and engineering. However Leibniz's notation, which ca me to dominate mathematics in continental Europe, involved writing the rate of change as df/dx and the rate of change of a rate of change as d2f/dx2. Leibniz's notation allowed one to multiply and divide the dx's and dy's. This a llowed much simplification of calculations in the calculus. Additionally, one could treat the little dx's and dy's as "infinitesimals", that is, one could treat them as infinitely small line elements or distances. The reality of these infinitesimal elements, or differentials, became a metaphysical issue. Leibniz was subtler in his formal, linguistic treatment of the differentials than some of his follow ers. However, given the utility of mathematical relations with the little dx's, European continental mathematicians tended to treat the infinitesimals as real. In the late eighteenth-century, D'Alembert and a number of others in Fran ce attempted to purge the calculus of differentials. However, most did so in a confused and erroneous manner, far inf erior to that of D'Alembert himself. In England, on the other hand, Newton's notation for the calculus held s way throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Many historians of mathematics have attributed the in feriority of British mathematics in part to the clumsiness and lack of perspicuity of Newton's notation, as well as to th e rejection of more careful consideration

of the notions of the calculus in general. Newton's concepts of "infinite littleness" involved such strange notions as that zero squared was less than zero itself. Newton was able to get the desired results himself by use of these some what clumsy, ad hoc techniques, given his own powerful, mathematical intuition, but his followers were at a clear disa dvantage to the continental users of the Leibnizian notation for the calculus. Bishop Berkeley in his The Analyst, pointed out with glee the contradict ion in Newton's formulations of the calculus. The Bishop concluded from this that the mathematics of physics was as much an irrational mystery as the truths of the Christian faith. Thus, scientists who could accept the Newtonian calculus on faith might as well have faith in god. Berkeley's logical criticisms were largely correct. However, mathemati cians paid much less attention to them than they deserved (virtually none at all on the continent) for the succeeding c entury. This was because of the philosophical and theological context of the criticism and the lack of what for them could be considered a viable alternative formulation of the calculus. Berkeley's philosophy of higher mathe matics as manipulation of concrete symbols rather than of actually existing infinites and infinitesimals remarkably resembles the great mathematician David Hilbert's turn of the twentieth century philosophy of "formalism" especial ly as simplified and made more empirical by Americans such as Haskell Curry. We will discuss the impact of the later French criticism of the calculus in our section of Boscovich. Boscovich and D'Alembert both in different ways applied Leibniz's principle of c ontinuity to their physics. Boscovich emphasized the continuity of space, time, and motion. He did this in order to c riticize Newton's concept of the collision of perfectly hard atoms. However, Boscovich was not a "continuist" with respect to his theory of the structure of matter. Boscovich believed that matter itself was constructed of a series of di screte, point-atoms. Boscovich, in effect, uses the continuity of motion in order to refute the continuity of matter. Boscovich repeatedly asserts the finitude of the number of particles in material objects, denying the existence of continuous matter, although believing in the continuity of space, time, and m otion. There are (potentially) an infinite number of spacio-temporal locations for the points, but there are only a finite number of actual, material points. Thus, there is a sort of becoming of continuity, to borrow Whitehead's term, in Boscov ich's system, as well as a "continuity of becoming." Boscovich writes: "The theory of non-extension is also convenient for eliminating from Nature all idea of a coexistence continuum--to explain which philosophers have up to now labored so very hard and generally in vain. Assuming non-extension, no division of a real entity can be carried out indefinitely; we shall not be broug ht to a standstill when we try to find out whether the number of parts which are actually distinct and separable is finite or infinite; nor shall we come to those innumerable difficulties, that with the idea of continuous composition, have giv en so much trouble to philosophers." and also, "I acknowledge continuity in motion only, which is something successive and not co-existent; and also in it alone, or

because of it alone, in corporeal entities at any rate, lies my reason for admit ting a law of continuity. From this it will be all the more clear, that, as I have remarked above, nature accurately observe s the law of continuity, or at least tries to do so." D'Alembert, for all his dislike of Boscovich and contempt for the brilli ant thinkers Leibniz and Euler because of their central European cultural background and metaphysical propensities (all -dominant in Leibniz, but only carefully limited and occasional in Euler, as we shall see), was one of the stro ngest believers in the principle of continuity among eighteenth century European writers. D'Alembert regularly appl ied the principle of continuity in his physical work on vibrating strings, sound, and continuous bodies. In the polemi cs and controversies concerning the vibrating string problem, D'Alembert took quite literally the Principle of Conti nuity. According to Truesdell, during in his earlier dispute with Daniel Bernoulli "When it seemed to his advantage, D'Al embert refused to consider an arbitrary accurate approximation as a valid answer for a physical problem." D'Alembert i n his later work took " continuity so seriously as to deny that the finite case `really existed'." This is surprisin g, given D'Alembert's somewhat skeptical attitudes toward the possibility of knowledge of the true nature of matter (note d in our discussion of Boscovich) and his rejection as childish of Euler's metaphysical speculations in Letters to a Germa n Princess concerning the nature of matter and aether. Indeed D'Alembert wrote to Voltaire concerning the works of Leibniz "I have not seen the collection of Leibniz's works. I think that it is a mass of rubbish from which there is little to be learnt." Yet D'Alembert seems to take Leibniz's Principle of Continuity more seriously in his physics, at least a heuristic aid, more seriously than do the continental mathematicians and developers of rational mech anics, who were more familiar with and more respectful to the ideas of Leibniz. Perhaps this is a typical example of how those that ridicule metaphysics, but refuse to think about it, come to act like dogmatic metaphysicians without k nowing it. D'Alembert asserts that touch can establish the existence of bodies, but not the "contiguity of parts." Thus the hypothesis of continuity is not a result of sense perception or observation. Probably D'Alembert would deny that he was taking the Law of Continuity as a metaphysical principle, but he certainly holds to it more dogmatically than some of the physical Cartesians and Leibnizians who one would assume would be more strongly committed to it by their philosophical orientations. It is interesting that the French sensationalist school (that is, those who derived all knowledge from senseperceptions or sensations, following the British empiricists such as John Locke) including, most notably, Condillac, in his Treatise on Sensations, rejected atoms on the philosophical grounds that the y were not evident in sense perception. Condillac's rejection of atomism is very similar to the rejection of atomism by the late nineteenth century German psychologist, physicist, and philosopher, Ernst Mach. Mach, in his Analysis of Sensations derived knowledge of both psychology and physics from "elements" (which were the sensations characterized neutrally, so as to be considered neither subjective nor objective.) Mach's starting point was like that which, f

ollowing the American psychologist and philosopher E. B. Holt, others later called "neutral monism." Mach denied that atoms were logically inferable from the data, and claimed that they were at best an conceptual ordering device for our t heories. But Mach, in fact, went further, and rejected atoms as a physical hypothesis as well. There is an ill-confirmed anecdote that late in his life Mach accepted the existence of atoms on the basis of indirect experimental demonstrat ion, saying "Now I believe in atoms," but this may be apocryphal or, at least, a polite remark not showing serious the oretical commitment. This same experiment early in the twentieth century came just after Ludwig Boltzmann commi tted suicide, in part, supposedly, because he could convince no one of the reality of atoms. Mach is usually also claimed to have rejected Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity. It is often commented how odd this is, insofar as Mach's critique of absolute space and time was highly important to Einstein, and Einstein called the attempt to reduce inertia to the effects of interactions with distant matter "Mach's principle," which he wished to build into General Re lativity Theory. (Many versions of Mach's Principle have since been formulated). It turns out that the passage in which Mach appears to have rejected Einstein, in a late Preface, is really an Osiander-like interpolation due to Mac h's son, who was politically associated with the faction of German physics (P. E. A. von Lenard and J. Stark, later to be Nazis) who rejected relativity theory as "Jewish physics." Condillac, very much like Mach on this issue, made the unjustified move from the philosophical critique of the reality status of atoms to the denial of atomism as a physical hypothesis. Indeed, Condillac went further and apparently accepted the physical reality of material continua. D'Alembert was a friend of Condillac in his early days and was ideologically associated with Condillac's school in his later work. It is possible that D'Alembert's apparent commitment to the reality of continua was supported by the French sensationalist critique of the atomic concept as in Condillac. An extreme, contemporary version of the argument from the continuity of sense-data or qualia to the real continuum of physical reality is to be found in the American philosopher Wilfred Sellars. Sellars claims, that despite the apparently particulate nature of matter, according to atomic and particle ph ysics, its real foundation must be continuist, to correspond to the radical continuity of perceived qualia, which m ust be identical with brain states (neural identity theory), and hence brain states, and the matter that makes them up, mus t be continuous. It is hard to tell whether the devotees of continuum mechanics were real ly metaphysical "continuists." That is, the relation of the physics of continuum mechanics in the eighteenth century to Leibniz's kind of metaphysical or philosophical commitment to genuine physical continua and opposition to substant ial atomism is generally difficult to determine. Daniel Bernoulli is the only one of the great continental pursuers of co ntinuum mechanics who explicitly developed models of matter with discrete atomic parts physically linked together . He was only one of the several

members of the Bernoulli family who worked in this area. The Bernoullis, like t he Bachs and the Brueghels, were a family in which the father and several sons all worked at the same craft. Danie l Bernoulli is almost alone among the experts on rational mechanics of the period in treating problems of elasticity i n terms of discontinuous finite sets of discrete bodies (as in his Letter to Clairaut, in the Journal de Scavans, March 1758, pp. 167-166.) Bernoulli writes, "My method ...is general...so long as finite quantities are involved." He also writes "... one may cause the final curve to pass through as many given points as one wishes and thus identify this curve with the one proposed to any degree of precision." (How close he sounds to Boscovich, writing in the same year as the Theoria was published!) Truesdell notes as to Daniel Bernoulli's preference for finite, discontinuous models, "There is a great difference between the vibrations of a continuous curve, consi dered as composed of an infinity of weights, and the vibrations of the same curve considered as loaded by a very gre at but finite number of weights joined by little lines." The reason for this is that in general the proper frequencies are incomm ensurable in the finite case but are commensurable in the continuous limit. In the dispute between Daniel Bernoulli and D'Alembert on the utility and validity of the two models of the vibrations of a string, the latter, surprisin gly, refused to consider an arbitrary accurate approximation as a valid answer for a physical problem. Later in his life, in 1775, at the Saint Petersburg Academy, Daniel Bern oulli reiterates his finite number element program, but now seems only to wish to take his finite case as a limit. Daniel Bernoulli was more of an empiricist and operationalist than many of his continental contemporaries in rational mechanics. This is to be seen in his well-known Hydrodynamics. Opera tionalism is the doctrine, developed in the twentieth century by the experimental physicist P. W. Bridgeman, that the meaning of a term is the operations involved in measuring it. Truesdell, who shares the rationalist contempt for th e empirically operational of his eighteenth century heroes writes that the work: " suffers from too close adherence to quantities. which can be measured: it lacks im agination. Daniel Bernoulli's definition of pressure ... is "operational" ..., while Euler's is not. But Danie l Bernoulli's concept of pressure cannot be extended to compressible fluids in motion. It is the intellectual and artistic theory of Euler, who did not waste his time on experiments, which led ultimately not only to the other field theories but al so to the practical fluid mechanics of today: the theory of the turbine, the ship, and the airplane" While Daniel Bernoulli is unusual for an eighteenth century continental European devotee of rational mechanics in his concern both to tie his conceptions directly to measurable phys ical observables (his "operationalism") and for his devotion to finite atomic models in the treatment of "continuous" ph ysical bodies, and D'Alembert is unusual in the explicit literalness with which he took the hypothesis of continu ity, it is difficult to determine in the case of the other members of the Bernoulli family and of Leonard Euler, who generally used continuum models in their mathematical treatment of flexible and elastic and fluid bodies, to what extent the believed that matter was genuinely

continuous in the manner of Leibnizian metaphysics. Leonard Euler is a case in point. Euler is by far the most mathematical ly brilliant of the eighteenth century successors of Newton and Leibniz. Many of Euler's mathematical innovations were not at all grasped by his contemporaries, or indeed, in some cases, for at least another century. In his later life Euler went progressively blind, and finally dictated from memory and without notes his treatises filled with lon g equations and even longer mathematical deductions. He promised the Russian Academy a treatise a month and almost met his goal. Euler also did several times write explicitly on his philosophical views, for instance in h is "Reflections on Space and Time" and in his much more popular and lengthy Letters to a German Princess Euler was car eful to distinguish mathematical from metaphysical hypotheses. In this he was a forerunner of Kant. Indeed comm entators such as Ernst Cassirer and Vleeschauer make much of both Euler and D'Alembert as forerunners of Kant's atti tude toward knowledge of the physical world. Euler opposed the metaphysical theory of point-monads, which was popular with the followers of Leibniz in Germany in his day. Thus he opposed a metaphysical point-atomism of the sort we find in Boscovich. Euler began in his youth with a mechanics based on point-atoms, but later progressively rejecte d atomism as a basis for mathematical physics, and treated the mechanics of rigid bodies, of elastic and deformable bo dies, and of liquids in terms of the continuum. In his Letters to a German Princess he carefully avoids any use of t he term 'atom.' He arguers that extended objects are infinitely divisible. There are no ultimate indivisible re sults of division, either as finitely large atoms, or as indivisible point-objects. In 1734, at the age of twenty-seven, Euler presents a mechanics, in the General Scholium of which (presumably modeled on Newton's "General Scholium" of the Principia in which New ton presents his views on absolute space and time) Euler writes: "Those laws of motion which a body observes when left to itself in continuing re st or motion pertain properly to infinitely small bodies, which can be considered as points .... First indeed we shall consider infinitely small bodies ... Then we shall attack bodies of finite size which are rigid....Thirdly we shall treat of flexible bodies...." However, according to Truesdell: "In 1749 Euler had come to realize that the error of his predecessors lay not in their adherence to mechanics -- for all scientists before or since , only Lapla ce might possibly rival Euler as a successful advocate of the theory of mechanic s --but in the wrong notion that mechanics is bound up with little physical part icles....In sections 5-8 is Euler's final and rather disgusted rejection of corp uscles. Henceforth the principles of mechanics themselves are to be applied dir ectly to the bodies of physical experience, and "particle" is to mean only a mat hematical point in a continuum theory of matter." Indeed in his embrace of the continuum, Euler made a distinction, which went beyond any of his contemporaries, and indeed many of his successors for a c entury, and even some of the textbooks of today. Euler distinguished between po ints in a continuum and infinitesimal volumes in a continuum. Euler's treatment of the distinction is in advance of most contemporary textbooks. For to treat volume e lement calculations rigorously one ought to use Stieltjes integrals, while the a verage working physicist uses the more elementary Riemann integrals unrigorously

. But what is the level of Euler's commitment either to point atoms as the result of a limit process in a continuum or to infinitesimal volume elements? In his "Reflections on Space and Time" Euler made a clear distinction between me taphysical and mathematical method. The conclusions we can draw about the natur e of bodies are those from physics, not from metaphysics. If our metaphysical d irectives conflict with our physics, the former must yield. In his Theory of Mo tion Euler distinguishes similarly between physical and metaphysical systems of categories. Our physical abstractions need not depend upon metaphysical theori es of space and time, and the latter must be moved aside if they interfere. "Place ...is something which is not dependent on bodies, just as little (as it is) a pure mental concept...; which however possesses for a reality outsi de of the understanding, that I may venture to determine, although we must ackno wledge some kind of reality in it. If however the philosophers divide all reali ty into determinate classes and believe that place belongs to none of these, the n I may rather believe that these classes would be drawn up from a deficiency of fundamental insight." There seems to be an oscillation on Euler's part between a rejection of philosophical abstraction on the one hand, and on the other hand the development of truly philosophical concepts of knowledge in the physical science out of the concepts of physics itself. In this latter mode we are led to a theory of "phy sical reality" in which reality is that which is represented by the mathematical equations. In this mode we should be led to say that Euler believed in the phy sical reality of the mathematical continuum as applied to rigid, elastic and flu id materials. On the other hand the view of physical reality as the perceptible , via Newton's public writings and, by another route, from the sensationalists is not without its effect on Euler. (See the discussion of Condillac and Mach a bove for an analogous progression, although not one which historically was used by Euler). Euler, abstract mathematician though he was, was far more careful th an many of his contemporaries and successors in noting the limitations and inade quacies of his physical hypotheses and models in actual application to nature, f or instance in hydrodynamics. Indeed, in hydrodynamics, these inadequacies lead to some of the famous "paradoxes" of classical hydrodyna mics, which Birkhoff, for instance, discusses. Yet, like D'Alembert, he is skeptical of the sort of knowledge, whi ch we have of physical nature itself apart from our representations. Neverthel ess, Euler's philosophy of nature brings him to a view of the nature of physical reality, which is very close to that of Boscovich, despite their differences on point-atoms vs. continuous media. Although Euler rejected atom-monads in the Letters to a German Princess, he supported the idea of a genuinely continuous aether. As to whether he suppo rted the reality of other genuinely continuous material bodies at a stronger lev el than their mathematical tractability and their physical predictive value, it is less clear. But there seem to be three strains leading him toward such a vie w. First, there is the tendency to trust the successful results of physics over the speculations of metaphysics, and second there is the route from a phenomenalist or phenomenological physics which stays close to the deliverances of sense and w ould favor the continuous bodies of experience, especially as this fits better w ith his mathematical work on rigid bodies and fluids than does the atomic hypoth esis. Finally there are the residual philosophical and physical contributions o f the Cartesian and Leibnizian schools of physics with their continuous aether and vortices. However, Euler's residual and little-noted "Car tesianism" is far more sophisticated and "modern" than the orthodox vorticism of Jean Bernoulli or the finite atomism of Daniel Bernoulli. RATIONAL CONTINUUM MECHANICS: ENDNOTES R. S. Brumbaugh, The Philosophers of Greece, Thomas Y. Crowell, 1970, p. 100, tr ans., Frag. 513, see standard transl., G. S. Kirk and J. E. Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers, Cambridge: C

ambridge University Press, p. 301.ss . Adolph Grnbaum, Modern Science and Zeno's Paradoxes, Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1967, Ch. III, pp. 115-118. . Andrew G. van Melsen, From Atmos to Atom, New York: Harper & Row, 1960, pp. 41ff, 58-73. See Stephen Koerner, The Philosophy of Mathematics, Harper & Row, and Hussey, Ar istotle's Physics: Books Three and Four, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983. . Jessep, Berkeley's Philosophy, op. cit., Ch 7, notes that several replies to Berkeley were penned. No serious replies appeared on the continent, but some seven replies were written in Britain. The most notable author to take Berkeley's criticisms seriously was Colin McLaurin, whose Treatise of Fluxions was motivate d by Berkeley's criticisms, Jessep, ibid., p. 280. . See Haskell B. Curry, Outlines of a A Formalist Philosophy of Mathematics, N orth Holland Publishing Company, 1951. Douglas M. Jessep, Berkeley's Philosophy of Mathematics, Chicago: Univers ity of Chicago Press, 1993, p. 106, correctly points out the similarity of Berkeley's views and Hilbert's formalism, although Berkeley is closer to Curry's extreme formalism than to that of Hilbert. . Ernst Cassirer, Das Erkenntnisproblem, Olms Reprint, vol. 2, p. 508. . Roger Joseph Boscovich, A Theory of Natural Philosophy, Latin & English edn. Government of the Serbs, Croats and Slovens, p. 89. . Boscovich, ss, op. cit., p. 117, emphasis added. . Truesdell, "The Rational Mechanics of Flexible or Elastic Bodies 1688-1788, Leonardi Euleri, Opera Omnia, vol. XI, Part 2, p 286. . Clifford Truesdell, "The Rational Mechanics of Flexible or Elastic Bodies 1 688-1788," , Leonardi Euleri, Opera Omnia, vol. XI, p. 288. . Ronald Grimsley, Jean D'Alembert, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963, p.2 75. . Grimsley, op. cit., p 239. See the review by Don Howard of Gereon Wolter, Mach I, Mach II, Einstein un d ie Relitativitatstheorie. Eine Falschung und ihre Folge, Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1987, in Isis, vol. 78 (1987), pp. 606-607. . See Wilfrid Sellars, The Carus Lectures, The Monist, "The Lever of Archimede s" in Sellars' Carus Lectures II, The Monist. vol. 64, no. 1 (January 1981) pp. 3-36. See also "Science, Sense Impress ions and Sensa: A Reply to Cornman," Review of Metaphysics, 1966-1967, pp. 391-447. . Truesdell, vol. 12, p. 262. . Truesdell, "The Rational Mechanics" vol XI, part 2, op. cit., p. 286. . Jerome Ravetz, "Vibrating Strings and Arbitrary Functions," in no editor, Th e Logic of Personal Knowledge, Glenoe, Illinois: Free Press, 1961, pp. 71-88. Truesdell, op. cit., p. 288. . Daniel Bernoulli, Hydrodynamica, (1738), transl. Thomas Carmody and Helmut K obus, New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1968. . Truesdell, "Rational Fluid Mechanics: 1765-1788," Leonardi Euler, Opera Omni a, vol. XIII, p. xi, cited in Mary Hesse, Forces and Fields, p. 191. Hesse's cited page number, doesn't tally with mine. . Leonard Euler, "Reflections on Space and Time," transl. by Link M. Lotter, i

n Arnold Koslow, ed., The Changeless Order, New York: Braziller, 1967, pp. 116-125. Leonard Euler, Letters of Euler on Different Subjects of Natural Philosophy, Addressed to a German Princess, 2 vols., ed. David Brewster, New York: J. & J. Harper, 1833. . Ernst Cassirer, Das Erkenntnisproblem, vol. 2, book 7, "Von Newton bis Kant, " pp. 396-585. Vleeschauer, The Development of Kantian Thought, London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1962, pp. 7, 1 1, 12, 14, 19, 28, 47, 48. Euler, Letters to a German Princess, op. cit., vol. 2, letter VII, pp. 33-39. . Truesdell, Clifford, " Rational Fluid Mechanics" , Series 2, vol. XII, 1954, pp. lxxxi. . Truesdell, op. cit., vol. XII, xliii. . Euler, Leonard, Theoria Motu,, section 128. . Cassirer Erkentnisproblem, vol. 2, p. 485, quoting Theoria Motus, Ch III, se ction 128.. . Truesdell, "The Rational Mechanics...", vol. XII, op. cit., p. 48. . Birkhoff, Garrett, Hydrodynamics, A Study in Logic, Fact and Similitude, New York: Dover, 1955. . Cassirer, Erkenntnisproblem, vol. II, op. cit., pp. 481-482. I think that Calliger's treatment of Euler as primarily a Newtonian goes too far rejecting Euler's Cartesianism. True, Euler rejects much in Descartes, but he does not truly accept Newton's finite, indivisible atoms. See Ronald Callige r, "Euler's 'Letters to a Princess of Germany' As an Expression of His Mature Sc ientific Outlook," Archive for the History of the Exact Sciences, vol. 15, no. 3 , 1976, pp. 211-233. Stephen Gaukroger, "The Metaphysics of Impenetrability: Euler's Conception of Force," British Journal of the History of Science, vol. 15 , July 1982, pp. 132-154 discusses the "Cartesian" aspects of Euler's definition of force in terms of contact forces based on impenetrability. Clearly Euler differs with Descartes on the identification of matter with extension and accept s Newton's laws of motion, but he also rejects Newton's version of the foundatio ns of mechanics, opting for a "rationalist," supposedly self-evident set of axio ms. For an English translation of part of Euler's mature statement of his found ations of mechanics, see L. Euler, "Argument for the Reality of Absolute Space," transl. by Milic Capek and Walter Emge, in Capek, ed., The Concepts of Space and Time, Dortrecht: D. Reidel, 1976, pp. 113-119.