Making molecularism. I. Selected papers. I. Bibliography

Description:

Fifteen years ago my book *L'Histoire du concept de « molécule »* was published in three volumes by Springer-Verlag France (Paris). There followed Dutch and US-English editions in which the emphasis shifted from Antiquity-Middle Ages-Renaissance to more recent times; a German edition is well underway. The message was -- and still is -- clear: we are witnessing last decades the breakthrough of a new, thoroughly molecular 'picture of the world'. Molecularism calls the tune. The series *Making molecularism* will highlight a collection of papers difficultly accessible that paved the way for its coming of age, with due attention for all mathematics at issue. Nowadays there is a whole alphabet of molecular specialties covering all the sciences, but some physicists deny their right to prosper if not to live. On the other hand, there are chemists who came to realize that for decades they have been telling humbug to their students. Even the classicists are in trouble: a new translation of Lucretius' *De rerum natura* appears to be deliberately made in view of silencing the latter's foremost spin-off, the first *molecular* theory. The series *Making molecularism*, then, is meant to discredit those 'historians' by summarizing the massive source-based evidence, this time in the form of a mosaic of papers. As a kind of 'reductio ad absurdum' of the counter-arguments -- if there are any -- a new deduction of Planck's constant is advanced, perfectly in line with the molecular tradition of the XIXth century.

subjects: new world picture,  new concept,  molecularism,  theater play

People: Epicurus,  Lucretius,  Beeckman,  Newton,  Stahl,  Buffon,  Haüy,  Lavoisier,  Laplace,  Maxwell,  Boltzmann,  Planck,  Einstein,  Bohr

Times: Antiquity-2000 A.D.