Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Urbanowicz, Piotr

Titel

Heavenly spirit or material being? Science on electricity at the turn of the 19th century in Poland

Ist Teil von

• History of science, 2023-09, Vol.61 (3), p.360-382

Ort / Verlag

London, England: SAGE Publications

Erscheinungsjahr

2023

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• In my paper I follow the emergence of the science of electricity in Poland. I believe that the science of electricity established in 1777 served as a new social program. Through the introduced translations, this science was intended to create a new social imaginary and social relations. I describe two interrelated processes: the social construction of the science of electricity, and negotiations between secular and religious definitions of electricity. In the first part of the article I show that both processes were related to each other and contributed to hybrid interpretations of electricity – as a “material being” and “spirit of the world.” In the second part of the paper I pay attention to the efforts made by Jan and Jędrzej Śniadecki to secularize the science of electricity in Vilnius. I follow the metaphor of ‘laboratory’ used in their works in order to describe the natural phenomena. I claim that Jędrzej Śniadecki established not only a new theory of electricity (a “radiant being”), but in fact a new understanding of social space. I point out that he did that by transferring scientific practices into the cultural space.