How do ideas become accepted by the scientific community? How and why do
scientists choose among empirically equivalent theories? In this
pathbreaking book translated from the Italian, Marcello Pera addresses
these questions by exploring the politics, rhetoric, scientific
practices, and metaphysical assumptions that entered into the famous
Galvani-Volta controversy of the late eighteenth century. This lively
debate erupted when two scientists, each examining the muscle
contractions of a dissected frog in contact with metal, came up with
opposing but experimentally valid explanations of the phenomenon. Luigi
Galvani, a doctor and physiologist, believed that he had discovered
animal electricity (electrical body fluid existing naturally in a state
of disequilibrium), while the physicist Alessandro Volta attributed the
contractions to ordinary physical electricity. Beginning with the
electrical concepts understood by scientists in the 1790s, Pera traces
the careers of Galvani and Volta and explains their laboratory
procedures. He shows that their controversy derived from two basic,
irreducible interpretations of the proper nature of a common domain:
Galvani saw the frog phenomenon as the work of biological organs, Volta
as that of a physical apparatus. The initial preference for Volta's
theory, maintains Pera, depended not on clear-cut methodological rules,
but on a dialectical dispute for which the renowned physicist was better
equipped, partly because he shared the dominant metaphysical views of
his time.
Originally published in 1991.
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