The Conception of Mechanism

Abstract

Hermann von Helmholtz not only rarely made a major issue out of the idea of nature that he advanced most notably in popular writing and which was linked to his scientific work in many ways; he also left it up to others to coin a term for it.27 What I would like to call Helmholtz's mechanism was one of the fundamental convictions shared by most physicists and large circles of other scientists throughout the second half of the nineteenth century.28 In two passages, Helmholtz very clearly exemplifies his idea of nature. One is found in the introduction to his most famous treatise The Conservation of Force: A Physical Memoir [Ueber die Erhaltung der Kraft], published in 1847, where he writes programmatically: “Natural phenomena should be traced back to the movements of material objects which possess inalterable motive forces that are dependent only on spatial relations”.29 He defines these forces more closely as “inalterable forces of attraction and repulsion, the intensity of the forces depending on the distance”.30 Twenty-two years later, basking in twofold fame as a physiologist and physicist, he says in his opening address to the Association of German Natural Researchers and Doctors [Versammlung Deutscher Naturforscher und Ärzte] in Innsbruck: