Charles-Augustin Coulomb’s Mathematization
摘要
This chapter discusses Charles Coulomb’s works on electricity, with a special focus on how he approached mathematization. Coulomb deduced theorems about the electric fluid while ignoring mechanistic considerations that could alter his findings. Therefore, contrary to Franz Aepinus’ case, Coulomb’s mathematics-oriented theory-building has an antagonistic relationship to mechanistic considerations. Bluntly put, he took mathematics so far that even well-formulated physical questions inside his theory of electricity were ignored.