一个训练有素的物理学家,KurdLasswitz(1848-1910)是最著名的小说家,德国现代科幻小说之父,作为一名科学历史学家,现代原子论史学的发起者。在19世纪末,拉维兹与新兴的马尔堡学派的新康德主义进行了激烈的对话,有助于塑造其大多数定义原则。到这十年结束时,这项研究已经发展成为两卷GeschichtederAtomistik(1890),这仍然是新康德科学史学最成功的例子。Lasswitz将对历史细节的关注与对智力工具的探索(Denkmittel)相结合,没有这些工具,“科学事实”将是不可能的。特别是,Lasswitz认为惠更斯动力学原子论是一个成功的科学理论的历史模型,由两个概念工具的相互作用形成:(A)实质性,对运动主体随时间变化的身份的要求,在广泛的原子中找到了它的科学表达;(B)可变性,瞬间持续的密集趋势,它在“微分”的概念中找到了它的概念固定。通过提出物理学中的个性问题,Lasswitz为19世纪新康德思想中科学史的利用提供了独特的视角。
A trained physicist, Kurd Lasswitz (1848-1910) is best known as a novelist, the father of modern German science fiction, and as a historian of science, the initiator of the modern
historiography of atomism. In the late 19th century, Lasswitz engaged in an intense dialogue with the emerging Marburg school of neo-Kantianism, contributing to shaping most of its defining tenets. By the end of the decade, this research had grown into a two-volume Geschichte der Atomistik (1890), which remains the most successful example of neo-Kantian
historiography of science. Lasswitz combined attention to historical detail with the search for the intellectual tools (Denkmittel) without which the \'fact of science\' would be impossible. In particular, Lasswitz regarded Huygens\' kinetic atomism as a historical model of a successful scientific theory, shaped by the interplay of two conceptual tools: (a) substantiality, the requirement for identity of the subject of motion through time, which found its scientific expression in the extensive atom; (b) variability, the intensive tendency to continue in an instant, which found its conceptual fixation in the notion of \'differential\'. By raising the problem of individuality in physics, Lasswitz offers a unique perspective on the utilization of the history of science in 19th-century neo-Kantian thought.