History as a Tool for Natural Science

Historical methods have long been put to use in the making of natural knowledge. In this article, I examine historical by nineteenth-century physicists, focusing on Austrian researcher Ernst Mach particular. argue that applied characteristic then-dominant and philological disciplines his own discipline physics. He construed history as a tool for physicist. On basis study notebooks correspondence with chemist-turned-historian Emil Wohlwill, explain what he sought achieve means tool, reconstruct practices characterizing research. These included reading, ordering, comparison textual sources. Moreover, appropriated historical-philological method source criticism. show prominent fellow physicists Mach, including Johann Poggendorff Hermann von Helmholtz, made similar methods, even though their aims were different. Together, cases these history-writing illustrate how science continued intertwine time increasing disciplinary fragmentation.