LA TEORÍA CINÉTICO CORPUSCULAR DE LA MATERIA

Abstract

This paper has been divided into three sections. In the first one, the kinetic-corpuscuñar theory of matter is associate with mechanicism, which is characterized by rejecting long distance action between two bodies; besides, it is also known for the  thesis it supports holding that the relationship between those bodies always involves a direct contact within a subtile fluid;  furthermore, for the importance adscri bed to the princi ples of conser vati on and, fi nal l y, for its affirmation of the causal  passivity of space. In the second section four conceptions of matter are analyzed: Locke’s, evidently psychologic; Spencer ’s, which subordinates the concept of matter to that the force; Mach’s, which attempts at reducing mechanics to kinemathics; and  that of Greek atomism, which admits, besides material bodies, the existence of vacuum. Newton’s definition about mas s as an  amount of matter, i mplies the important epistemologic thesis about the main concepts of mechanics: mass, density, volume, force, trajectory, inertia, speed, etc., which necessarily correlate to one another. En the third section, three proposals partly  differing from the kinetic-corpuscular are studied: Boscovich’s and Kant’s dynamism, which highlights the dependency of the  massic point to its field of force; Ostwald’s energetism, which prepares the idea of equivalence between mass and energy; the  theory of fluency in Descartes and Lord Kelvin, according to which matter can be described as whirwinds or vortexes within a universal plenum.