Thank you for your interest. Let me say, the work and basic ideas of R. Bosovich are one of my early inspirations. Recently there is sort of higher interest for his work and for far reaching ideas of his, especially in the light of the modern so-called “unification” expectations. In his physical intuition it seems he was few century ahead.

The main scientific work, the book, of Boscovich is his “Theoria Philosophiae Naturalis” from year 1763. (personally I read it in Latin and Serbo-Croat version since 1978). It is clear that he positioned his insights between Leibnitz’ pre-existent harmony of monads and Newton’s instantaneous gravity force (alchemical) idea. So his main idea is the existence of limitless number of point-like (1-D) “centers of Force”. That Force (F) is pre-existent and in fact is Unity Force. The law of the F between any two “points-centers” is highly complex in respect of r (although he suspect that it must be also v and a dependent). In the book, mainly as an addendum, there is fine set of geometrical pictures. That is exactly how he expresses his ideas. Obviously he had great geometrical imagination although, no doubt, that he also was well grounded in the advance maths of the time.

Well, the mentioned Force law is very interesting, namely the force possesses two clear “limes”: for r -> 0, F is repulsive and goes to infinity, but for r -> inf. F goes to 0. In between, F constantly changes its sign in dependence of r! It is nonetheless amazing how he, starting form this fundamental insight, consequently describes all to him known natural phenomena.

It seems to me it could be especially interesting for you how he is treating the fundamental question of space and time. In a way, that was a point where Boscovich was very close to the modern questionings. Obviously he was in early “relativistic” and fairly advance examinations of the meanings “space” and “time” and theirs “reference dependent” process/meanings of a physical measuring. Seeing in such a perspective, R. Boscovich, in spite of instantaneous character of his F, could be seen as an ancestor of Faraday’s force-field concept.

That would be, in very short, the “scientific” note about one of the greatest but no well-known minds ever (e.g. by meaning of F. Nietzsche). Finally, allow me to say I’m also to some extent personally attached to Rugger Boscovich via fact that his origin is from Dubrovnik (Adriatic) region of the divine ex-Yugoslavia.

The very best,
D T