| From a literary, qualitative pursuit physics emerged at the end of the eighteenth century as a quantitative subject based on abstract, mathematical theory and precise, systematic experiment. Scholars have generally located this development in Napoleonic France. This dissertation, which focuses on meteorology, shows quantification to have been international and to have begun as early as 1760.; In the early modern period meteorology embraced most of experimental physics. Its great popularity in the 1770s derived in part from the vogue of alpine exploration and the interest of governments both in the effects of the weather on public welfare, and in surveys, where barometric hypsometry is used to determine heights from measurements of air pressure. I have selected for this study three meteorological topics that especially preoccupied natural philosophers of the late eighteenth century: aqueous vapor; barometric hypsometry; and climatology.; The quantification of experimental physics was a revolution of styles and methods. Before 1750 natural philosophers favored qualitative, pictorial theories of vapor and experimented unsystematically. After 1770 a more abstract style and precise, systematic experimentation created a mathematical physics of vapor, in which quantity, heat and pressure were quantified for the first time.; The interaction of applied mathematics and engineering with physics also contributed to quantification. Barometric hypsometry originated in applied mathematics. But though quantitative its results were vitiated by imprecise experiment and neglect of physical factors. The adoption after 1770 of exact experimental methods and a more physical approach remedied the situation.; My examination of climatology shows that before the last third of the century the weather was perceived as a local and static event of subjective experience. After 1770 newly-founded meteorological societies assembled large collections of data and applied exact methods to their analysis. Thereby the weather was objectified and its global, dynamic character revealed. |
