198
I have to admit that the difficulty in treating the complexity of the content of this book in
such a way as to make it easy to understand to the largest possible audience has been much
harder than I thought. With such a goal it was necessary to keep myself from making any
statements and demonstrations using formulas and mathematical computations, while at the
same time avoiding having them lose their power of conviction. Moreover, when dealing
with first principles, such could not actually be proven by mathematics, which is a powerful
tool but cannot itself be the theoretical basis of phenomena ….
We find here a modern work of science popularization, which he wrote “in the
scraps of time allowed by all my other duties.” Only a highly talented person with
an enormous ability to synthesis could have done this.
It was Secchi’s intention that the book would be, simply, a summation of the
knowledge of physics at that time. But even with this approach, he was not able to
avoid touching on controversy. Although the book was widely appreciated, especially by those who were looking to inspire the teaching of philosophy in a way that
could progress with scientific research, at the same time a lot of criticism came from
the ecclesiastical side and in particular from Secchi’s own Society of Jesus.
As a matter of fact, all during his life Secchi was under attack on both sides by
lay and religious people (see Tanzella-Nitti, Chap. 3, in this volume). When L’Unità
delle forze fisiche was published, the neo-Thomist Jesuit, Father Giovanni Maria
Cornoldi (1822–1892), wrote an explicit accusation in the Jesuit journal Civiltà
Cattolica that Secchi was a supporter of mechanistic theories, contrary to the
Thomistic view (see Chinnici 2019: 263–269). He was accused of “having adhered
to the Democritus’ Atomism and to the Cartesian theory of vortices in astronomy.”
An embittered Secchi replied: “I can only say that physics has progressed a bit after
St. Thomas and I believe that, were St. Thomas living at our time, he would have
adopted the physics of nowadays, like he adopted the physics of his time.”
Later the book also drew the attention of Friedrich Engels (1820–1895), who
mentioned it in his Dialectics of Nature (see Chinnici 2019: 271–272 and TanzellaNitti, Chap. 3, in this volume.)
11.3 A Modern Appraisal
In Secchi’s time, the only known fundamental forces were the gravitational force
and the electric (and magnetic) force: Newton, in his Philosophiae Naturalis
Principia Mathematica he clarified that terrestrial and celestial gravity are nothing
but different manifestations of the same force. Moreover, as it is above mentioned,
by Secchi’s time electricity and magnetism had also been unified in Maxwell’s theory, which is described by his famous set of equations governing and linking the
electric and magnetic fields.
In his book Secchi deeply acknowledged Newton and other scientists of the
past (Kepler, Galileo, Halley, Hooke, etc.), for their work, while he cited Maxwell
just in a footnote on page 11 of Chap. III: “besides the known attempts by Lamé,
Cauchy and Verdet in optics we can see those by Maxwell to join magnetism and the
R. Capuzzo-Dolcetta
I have to admit that the difficulty in treating the complexity of the content of this book in
such a way as to make it easy to understand to the largest possible audience has been much
harder than I thought. With such a goal it was necessary to keep myself from making any
statements and demonstrations using formulas and mathematical computations, while at the
same time avoiding having them lose their power of conviction. Moreover, when dealing
with first principles, such could not actually be proven by mathematics, which is a powerful
tool but cannot itself be the theoretical basis of phenomena ….
We find here a modern work of science popularization, which he wrote “in the
scraps of time allowed by all my other duties.” Only a highly talented person with
an enormous ability to synthesis could have done this.
It was Secchi’s intention that the book would be, simply, a summation of the
knowledge of physics at that time. But even with this approach, he was not able to
avoid touching on controversy. Although the book was widely appreciated, especially by those who were looking to inspire the teaching of philosophy in a way that
could progress with scientific research, at the same time a lot of criticism came from
the ecclesiastical side and in particular from Secchi’s own Society of Jesus.
As a matter of fact, all during his life Secchi was under attack on both sides by
lay and religious people (see Tanzella-Nitti, Chap. 3, in this volume). When L’Unità
delle forze fisiche was published, the neo-Thomist Jesuit, Father Giovanni Maria
Cornoldi (1822–1892), wrote an explicit accusation in the Jesuit journal Civiltà
Cattolica that Secchi was a supporter of mechanistic theories, contrary to the
Thomistic view (see Chinnici 2019: 263–269). He was accused of “having adhered
to the Democritus’ Atomism and to the Cartesian theory of vortices in astronomy.”
An embittered Secchi replied: “I can only say that physics has progressed a bit after
St. Thomas and I believe that, were St. Thomas living at our time, he would have
adopted the physics of nowadays, like he adopted the physics of his time.”
Later the book also drew the attention of Friedrich Engels (1820–1895), who
mentioned it in his Dialectics of Nature (see Chinnici 2019: 271–272 and TanzellaNitti, Chap. 3, in this volume.)
11.3 A Modern Appraisal
In Secchi’s time, the only known fundamental forces were the gravitational force
and the electric (and magnetic) force: Newton, in his Philosophiae Naturalis
Principia Mathematica he clarified that terrestrial and celestial gravity are nothing
but different manifestations of the same force. Moreover, as it is above mentioned,
by Secchi’s time electricity and magnetism had also been unified in Maxwell’s theory, which is described by his famous set of equations governing and linking the
electric and magnetic fields.
In his book Secchi deeply acknowledged Newton and other scientists of the
past (Kepler, Galileo, Halley, Hooke, etc.), for their work, while he cited Maxwell
just in a footnote on page 11 of Chap. III: “besides the known attempts by Lamé,
Cauchy and Verdet in optics we can see those by Maxwell to join magnetism and the
R. Capuzzo-Dolcetta