ABSTRACT
Physics at the turn of the nineteenth century was not uninfluenced by the general intellectual climate of Fin-De-Siècle culture, but neither did it reflect it to any considerable degree. In so far that this mentality or Zeitgeist was associated with negative sentiments or stereotypes such as bourgeois decadence, degeneration, despair, and escapism, it did not include the world of physics or most other natural sciences. Physics at the time was a highly developed and professional science. Experimental and applied aspects dominated the field, yet the last decades of the century witnessed the emergence and growth of theoretical physics as distinct from the earlier tradition of mathematical physics. Newtonian mechanics was undoubtedly held in great esteem in the late nineteenth century. It was widely accepted that the goal of physics – or sometimes even its definition – was the reduction of all physical phenomena to the principles of mechanics.
