The Creation of a New Science: Joseph Fourier's Analytical Theory of Heat

Abstract

In this study I examine the genesis of Joseph Fourier's analytical theory of heat. I show how Fourier removes the study of heat propa gation from the broad realm of natural philosophy and establishes it as a well-defined autonomous branch of mathematical physics out side the context of dynamics and chemistry. In turn, I examine the conceptual, the physical, and the epistemological and methodological bases of the theory. Throughout, I recognize that the researches that Fourier published in his famous Analytical Theory of Heat in 1822 be long to the first decade of the nineteenth century, a finding of recent scholarship.1