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DURING THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION two relatively independent developments joined forces: the mechanization of the world picture, to use Anneliese Maier's famous term, and the recognition of the crucial role to be played by observation and experiment in the establishment of a scientifically valid theory. The attempt to describe natural phenomena by means of particles and motion was appealing to the new scientific age. Within a few decades corpuscular theories of matter evolved from the obliquity of a controversial fancy into a widely accepted rationale. Compared, however, to the rise of astronomy and mechanics, this success remained ambiguous. Seventeenth-century atomism did not necessarily provide fertile soil for an understanding of material properties and processes. Its empirical background was weak, and not one of its alleged proofs would be accepted by today's scientific standards. In Galileo's inclined plane and his law of falling bodies, or in Newton's theory of colors and his experimentum crucis with the prism, theory and experiment, observation and conclusion, were connected in a way that is still convincing. In atomism, however, there was no experimental proof possible, although most corpuscular theories of the seventeenth century explicitly claimed to be based upon experience. But it was not until the nineteenth century that experimental results made the atomic theory at least plausible. The questionable relationship between seventeenth-century atomism and its empirical background has been obscured to some extent by later historians. When the standard histories of atomism were written, the atomic hypothesis itself was still very much under debate. Twentieth-century historians of science, on the other hand, have all too easily taken the atom for granted. With few exceptions they dealt with these issues in terms of mere intellectual history and neglected the empirical aspects or underestimated their importance. In 1968 Hans Kangro reminded us that the empirical difficulties involved in early modern corpuscularianism are well worth being studied by historians of science.'

Early Seventeenth-Century Atomism: Theory, Epistemology, and the Insufficiency of Experiment