Fisica, scienze, applicazioni all’inizio dell’Unità d’Italia. Temi e posizioni epistemologiche nella rivista «Il Politecnico» (1860-1869)

This work explores Italian physics in the important initial decade (1860-1870) of the national unification. The aim is to provide elements on the topics of debate and on the status of the discipline also in relation to the other sciences and to the idea of the practical applications of scientific knowledge. The point of observation, that of the contents appeared in the journal “Il Politecnico”, is particular but anyway significant due to the importance and wide range of action of the journal. The analysis brings out relevant elements about the particular issues physics was concerned with as well as at the more general level of the epistemological conceptions. In the context of the constitution of the new national meteorological services, entrusted to Carlo Matteucci and Giovanni Cantoni, meteorology emerges as a field of strong theoretical and applicative interest for physics. There is also an interesting intertwining with the biological theme of spontaneous generation and this interdisciplinary area can be identified at the origin of the pioneering interpretation Cantoni proposed for Brownian motion on the basis of the dynamical theory of heat. The national unification highlights the backwardness of Italian physics and raises the question of the objectives to be given for alignment with that of the advanced European countries. Several contributions in the journal show an attempt to gather the Italian forces, also from sectors bordering on physics, around the theories of the convertibility and equivalence of physical forces (convertibility and equivalence of the various forms of energy), or “physics of the future”, as Cantoni effectively calls this fundamental orientation emerged nearly two decades earlier in the contexts of German and English physics (Mayer, Helmholtz, Grove, Joule).