Ruđer Bošković and the Structure of the Experience of Scientific Discovery

Abstract

Ruđer Josip Bošković (1711-1787) was a Jesuit priest and a scientist from the former Republic of Dubrovnik in today’s Croatia. He published many works in such fields as mathematics, physics, astronomy and geodesy. According to Werner Heisenberg, Bošković’s “main work, Theoria Philosophiae Naturalis, contains numerous ideas which have reached full expression only in modern physics of the past fifty years.” The question that this paper seeks to elucidate is what enabled Bošković to anticipate the discoveries of modern physics.Because Bošković could not avail himself of the resources and instruments by which modern theories are validated, it is assumed that there exists a mechanism of subjective validation that allowed him to accept the truthfulness of his ideas. It will be argued that this mechanism of internal validation is very similar to the process of spiritual transformation. More specifically, using Polanyi’s notion of twofold awareness (subsidiary and focal), it will be shown that this mechanism is best explained by the fact that when an idea has been fully internalized by a person so that it has become an instrument by which that person makes sense of the world and interacts with it, it acquires by this process an enormous credibility.