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.
The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand
technology to again make available previously out-of-print books
from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press.
These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these
important books while presenting them in durable paperback
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