Theorizing the distinction between solids, liquids and air

pressure from Stevin to Pascal

Alan F. Chalmers

pp. 55-67

in: Friedrich Stadler (ed), Integrated history and philosophy of science, Berlin, Springer, 2017

Abstract

Seventeenth-century scholars could take for granted distinctions between solids, liquids and air that were by no means novel. In this paper I explore the way in which these distinctions were gradually sharpened up, by way of experimentation and the theorising accompanying it, to the point where important beginnings of a theoretical grasp of the essential distinctions between the three states of matter was achieved.