Mechanistic Images in Geometric Form: Heinrich Hertz's Principles of Mechanic

During the last three years of his life Heinrich Hertz wrote a treatise on mechanics which was to be the last attempt to supply a satisfactory foundation to classical mechanics. It was published posthumously in 1894, the year of his death.
In the talk I shall in particular analyze the connection between the physical content of the book and its mathematical form. Hertz was the first physicist who based mechanics on the new Riemannian differential geometry. I shall explain this formalism and its physical background and I shall argue that Hertz's image of matter was created in order to facilitate the deduction of the fundamental line element. This argument is based on a study of the manuscripts Hertz wrote while working on his mechanics. Although Hertz's new foundation of physics was soon made obsolete by the advent of the theory of relativity, his aproach had lasting influence on the presentation of mechanics, on Hilbert's foundational work and on natural philosophy.