The Use of Instruments and Machines in Early Hydrodynamics (1687–1738)

Understanding the motion of water was a pressing social problem around 1700. Considerable capital, both intellectual and financial, was spent in trying to deflate floodings and improve channeling and power extraction from water wheels. This talk addresses how contemporary philosophers and mathematicians tried to deal with problems relating to water. In particular, my focus will be on the conceptualization and quantification of hydrodynamics through the use of instruments and machines. Starting with book II of Newton's Principia, there were increased attempts to extend mechanical theory to encompass fluid motions. Part of these attempts was the construction of instruments and machines to simulate, visualize, and quantify the various phenomena and concepts involved. I will argue that early hydrodynamics was in several ways a paradigmatic case of 'physical mathematics' as it developed throughout the eighteenth century.

Dr. Jip van Besouw is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, where he received his PhD in 2017, and a Fellow of the Descartes Centre at Utrecht University. His research centres on the development of experimental and mathematical practices in seventeenth and eighteenth-century natural philosophy, as well as on the methodological and epistemological discourses of that time.