Uneasy Genius: The Life And Work Of Pierre Duhem

478 Pages·1987·28.818 MB·English

by  Stanley L. Jaki (auth.)

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Distributors
jar the United States and Canada: Kluwer Academic Publishers, P.O. Box 358,
Accord Station, Hingham, MA 02018-0358, USA
jar the UK and Ireland: Kluwer Academic Publishers, MTP Press Limited,
Falcon House, Queen Square, Lancaster LAI lRN, UK
jar all other countries: Kluwer Academic Publishers Group, Distribution Center,
P.O. Box 322, 3300 AH Dordrecht, The Netherlands
ISBN-13: 978-90-247-3532-7 e-ISBN -13: 978-94-009-362 3-2
DOl: 1 .1007/978-94-009-3623-2
Book Information
Second printing 1987.
Copyright
© 1984, 1987 by Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Dordrecht.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1987
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of
the publishers,
Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, P.O. Box 163, 3300 AD Dordrecht,
The Netherlands.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION .IX
1. YOUNG PIERRE
Parents, home and early years (1) - Eyewitness to a fateful year (6) -
College Stanislas (13) - Life at Stanislas (16) - Young scholar (21) -
Personal exploits (24) - Teachers remembered (27) - Ready for the
gran des ecoles (32)
2. THE NORMALIEN 37
A far cry from 'normal' school (37) - Cacique general (43) - An ill·fated
thesis (47) - Antic1ericals versus Catholics (53) - Sailing on waters and
events (57) - Under Pasteur's eyes (60) - Young man in pursuit of rigor
(63)
3. LECTURER IN LILLE 71
Citadel against citadel (71) - Encomiums from officialdom (75) - A
brilliant doctorate (78) - Students in awe (80) - A vibrant faculty group
(84) - Portrait of a mind (88) - Politics: ordinary and academic (90) -
Married and widowed (96) - Comforts and frustrations of science (99) -
Crushing weight of stacked cards (102)
4. IN TRANSIT IN RENNES 107
A not so somnolent town (107) - Frustrated teacher (110) - Creating a
stir (112) - In the center of a debate (115) - Scholar in a wrong place
(118)
5. BORDEAUX: A ROAD TO PARIS? 123
From home to university (123) - A chair and a department (126) - A
string of doctorates and their perspective (131) - A great first ignored
(137) - Prodigious productivity and a recognition (141) - Life at home
(145) - Avid hiker (147) - A chair and its political prize (149) - A small
speech as a big crime (154) - In a clash for a sacred cause (161)
6. BORDEAUX: JOURNEY'S END 171
A companionable solitary (171) - Intransigent integrity (175) - Twice
bereaved (184) - Relentless work and growing recognition (191) - A
drawn-out election (197) - A student forever (203) - Waging his war to
the end (210)
7. IN MEMORIAM 221
Din of war and summer lull (221) - Bordeaux remembers (226) - The
first anniversary (230) - Postwar reminiscences (237) - Some noble
efforts (241) - Missed anniversaries (244)
ILLUSTRATIONS 247
8. DUHEM THE PHYSICIST 259
The making of a physicist (259) - The physicist as seen by himself (268)
- The physicist and his peers (279) - A narrowing advance (294) - The
physicist and posterity (302)
9. DUHEM THE PHILOSOPHER 319
Common sense with a realist touch (319) - Attitude to metaphysics
(324) - Rigor as strength and weakness (328) - Philosophy through
history (336) - Philosopher on trial (341) - The Theorie physique (345)
- Critics of the Theorie physique (350) - Christian positivism (355) -
French philosophers (359) - American dissertations (365) - The crux of
the matter (368)
10. DUHEM THE HISTORIAN 375
A special historian (375) - To unsuspected headwaters (384) -
Continuity through Leonardo (388) - The source of continuous growth
(393) - Scholarship as apologetics (397) - The quest for completeness
(400) - A gamut of reactions (406) - Attitudes toward a new vision
(413) - The Renaissance threatened (421) - Posthumous volumes (428)
- An age in the middle (433)
LIST OF DUHEM'S PUBLICATIONS 437
INDEX OF NAMES 457
INDEX OF SUBJECTS 469
In his study (c. 1905)
By the same author:
Les tendances nouvelles de l'ecchisiologie
The Relevance of Physics
Brain, Mind and Computers
(Lecomte du Noiiy Prize, 1970)
The Paradox of Olbers' Paradox
The Milky Way: An Elusive Road for Science
Science and Creation: From Eternal Cycles
to an Oscillating Universe
Planets and Planetarians: A History of Theories of the Origin
of Planetary Systems
The Road of Science and the Ways to God
(Gifford Lectures, University of Edinburgh, 1975 and 1976)
The Origin of Science and the Science of its Origin
Fremantle Lectures, Oxford, 1977)
And on This Rock: The Witness of One Land
and Two Covenants
Cosmos and Creator
Angels, Apes, and Men
Chesterton, a Seer of Science
The Keys of the Kingdom: A Tool's Witness to Truth
Lord Gifford and His Lectures: A Centenary Retrospect
Chance or Reality and Other Essays
Translations with introduction and notes:
The Ash Wednesday Supper (Giordano Bruno)
Cosmological Letters on the Arrangement
of the World Edifice (J.-H. Lambert)
Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (I. Kant)
INTRODUCTION
A hundred years have now gone by since in the midsummer of 1882 Pierre Duhem,
a graduate of College Stanislas, completed with brilliant success his entrance exams
to the Ecole Normale Superieure and embarked on his career as a theoretical
physicist. His father, a textile salesman, hoped that Hierre would pursue a career in
business, one of the few professional fields where perhaps he would not have
succeeded. Not that young Duhem lacked sense for the practical. He could have
easily made a name for himself as an artist had he developed professionally his
skill to draw portraits and landscapes. His ability to make a point and his readiness
to join in a debate, could have earned him fame as a lawyer. A potential actor was
in sight when he entertained friends with mimicry. That as a student of physics
he entered and stayed first in his class at the Ecole Normale, did not thwart his
talents for the life sciences. No less a biologist than Pasteur tried to obtain Duhem
for assistant. His command of Greek and Latin would have secured him a career
as a classicist. He was a Frenchman, not to be met too often, whose rightful ad
miration for and mastery of his native tongue, did not prove a barrier to the major
modern languages. As one who taught himself the complex art of medieval paleo
graphy, he could easily have mastered the many auxiliary sciences needed by a
consummate historian.
In fact, history was the only field which was a rival of physics as young Duhem
pondered his future career. He chose to become a physicist though not to the
extent of letting his bent for history be atrophied. His lectures on theoretical
physics showed from the very start a keen appreciation of the history of its basic
concepts and assumptions. It should not therefore seem surprising that after fifteen
years of pondering on the truth of mechanics in historical perspective as well, he
seized, in 1904, on an innocuous looking detail that had already been noted by
several historians of science but who left it at that. Always intent on full clarity
and rigor, the scientist-philosopher in Duhem followed up that detail in a manner
which was nothing short of heroic. The result was a massive finding which, if given
the appreciation due to factual evidence, would have resulted in a vast expansion of
x
the horizons of the historiography of science caught in the myth that science
descended as a Deus ex machina from heaven on the inclined plane of Galileo.
Three quarters of a century later references to Duhem all too often suggest that
his fate is to remain damned with faint praise. The proofs of this are many and one
of them is of monumental proportion. It relates to the emergence, during the
decades following World War II, of the historiography of science as a clearly identi
fiable professional enterprise. Although in the process sedulous attention has been
given to many minor topics and to many a figure of secondary and of even less
importance, Duhem, the historian of science, has attracted the systematic attention
of no one in that profession whose voice has, in recent years, gained much influence.
Duhem the philosopher of science fared better, although all too often he is
brought to the scene only on Mach's coattails, a pattern particularly in evidence
around 1966 when the fiftieth anniversary of Mach's death prompted a flood of
symposia, conferences, monographs, and articles. Hardly anybody recalled then
that the same number of years had passed since Duhem's death. The admirers of
Mach should not be blamed for not being eager to say much about Duhem. They
seem to suspect that, contrary to appearances and stereotyped phrases much in
vogue, Duhem does not belong to the Machist camp, and much less to its logical
positivist rearguard. The neglect of Duhem by those historians and philosophers of
science who claim to belong simply to realms in which the professed highest
standard is respect for facts and for facts alone regardless of their provenances, is
another matter. As to those academics in France, to whom Duhem was really close
and who knew the value of his thought, they bear a special responsibility for the
fact that apparently no effort was made to recover his letters to physicists,
historians, philosophers, theologians, colleagues, relatives, and friends while many
of these were still alive. The task would have been all the easier because Duhem
not only kept a booklet of the addresses of all his professional correspondents but
also kept many of their letters to him. Never a friend of novelties, such as the
typewriter, which became a widely used instrument even in official circles only a
few years before World War I, Duhem made a copy of his letters only in a very
few cases. In working through the over three thousand letters written to him, a
collection recently acquired by the Academle des Sciences, one cannot help being
seized by a sense of keen frustration: It is doubtful that two generations after his
death the recovery of many of his letters and even of some academic documents
relating to him would still be possible.
Any author of a book like this may find in that practical impossibility a blessing
in disguise. The very thought of summarizing the well over twenty thousand printed
pages which Duhem produced should seem discouraging even apart from the
thought of telling at the same time the story of Duhem's life and career, together
with sufficient details about the French academic, cultural, scientific, and political
life during the six crucial decades which Duhem's life spanned, to say nothing of
the relevant material accrued since his death. Duhem himself felt dismayed when in
early 1913 the Academie des Sciences asked him to sum up his work in a few pages.
So much in the way of advance apology for what could not be included in a