Friedrich Wilhelm Ostwald

Background

Ostwald, Friedrich Wilhelm was born on September 2, 1853 in Riga, Latvia.

Education

Tartu, Estonia, 1872-1878. Habilitation. 1881.

Career

Riga Polytechnikum, 1881 7. Leipzig, 1887-1906; Founder with Van t’Hoff of the Zeitschrift für physikalische Chemie. 1887; Nobel Prize, 1909.

Views

One of the principal founders of chemistry in the late nineteenth-century, reputation based on his work on the theory ot solutions and electrolysis and on the theory and standardization of colour, Ostwald’s metaphysics is an outgrowth of his scientific views. Just as w physical chemistry all that mattered were the energy relationships between different states, so m reality, on the positivist assumption that metaphysics can and should reflect one’s science, matter was a redundant concept since only energy changes were experientially detectable. Thus in the eyes of Ostwald the ways were open towards a metaphysical monism in which matter was abolished and energy was the only substance. Ostwald energetically publicized his views in contributions to widely sold book series, and generalized this aPproach into ethics, proclaiming the 'categorical imperative’ of the minimization of energy. He drew the obvious pacifist conclusion that war was evil but changed his mind on the outbreak of the First World War. While as a scientific programme energetics was popular and successful until the nse of the new atomic physics in the early years of the twentieth century, relatively few of Ostwald’s scientific allies accepted his metaphysical conclusions. Although proclaimed as an anti-materialist system, it seemed to lead only to a new form of materialism. Like many other positivists he contributed extensively to the history of science. He also collaborated with Couturat in the international language movement.

Interests

• Philosophers & Thinkers

  Spinoza and E. Haeckel.