Alexander Macfarlane

“ Did not Kant say that the three problems of metaphysics are God, freedom, and immortality? What is metaphysics but speculation based upon physical science concerning things which can never be reached directly by the methods of physics? The Unseen Universe was metaphysics of the best or worst (however you may view it) kind; it was full of Carnot's reversible engine, the mechanical equivalent of heat, vortex-atoms and so forth. ”

“ When from the phenomena of life we pass on to those of mind we enter a region still more profoundly mysterious. We can readily imagine that we may here be dealing with phenomena altogether transcending those of mere life, in some such way as those of life transcend, as I have endeavored to infer those of chemistry and molecular attractions, or as the laws of chemical affinity in their turn transcend those of mere mechanics. ”

“ I think I am justified in claiming for the hypothesis of molecular vortices, as a means of advancing the theory of the mechanical action of heat, the merit of having fulfilled the proper purposes of a mechanical hypothesis in physical science, which are to connect the laws of molecular phenomena by analogy with the laws of motion; and to suggest principles such as the second law of thermodynamics and the laws of the elasticity of perfect gases, whose conformity to fact may afterwards be tested by direct experiment. ”

“ The imaginary teacher who thus described Solomon's House to a traveler also said: "The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes and secret motions of things." But Whewell said: "Knowledge is to be dealt with as the power of interpreting nature and using her forces, not as a power of exciting the feelings of mankind and providing remedies for social evils."
In the interval between the publication of the History and the Philosophy Whewell took a step which may appear erratic, but which in reality was a step toward the accomplishment of his great plan. ”

“ Not yesterday's work, lest he fall into despair, not to-morrow's, lest he become a visionary not that which ends with the day, which is a worldly work, nor yet that only which remains to eternity, for by it he cannot shape his action. Happy is the man who can recognize in the work of to-day a connected portion of the work of life, and an embodiment of the work of eternity. ”

“ It is quite certain that the whole store of energy in the solar system has been greater in all past time than at present; but it is conceivable that the rate at which it has been drawn upon and dissipated, whether by solar radiation, or by volcanic in the Earth or other dark bodies of the system, may have been nearly equable, or may even have been less rapid, in certain periods of the past. ”

“ Science can be expected to do but little to aid us here, since the instrument of research is itself the object of investigation. It can but enlighten us to the depth of our ignorance and lead us to look to higher aid for that which most nearly concerns our well-being."
In 1880 the Cambridge University Press began the republication in collected form of Stokes' Mathematical and Physical Papers. ”

“ To the doctrines of the Conservation and Transformation of Energy, Prof. William Thomson added the doctrine of the dissipation of energy. This doctrine asserts that there exists in nature a tendency to the dissipation or uniform diffusion of mechanical energy originally collected in stored up form; in consequence of which the solar system (and the whole visible universe) tends towards a state of uniformly diffused heat; in which state according to the laws of thermodynamics no further transformation of energy is possible; in other words, nature tends towards a state of universal death. ”

“ No theory of evolution can be formed to account for the similarity of molecules, for evolution necessarily implies continuous change, and the molecule is incapable of growth or decay, of generation or destruction. None of the processes of Nature, since the time when Nature began, have produced the slightest difference in the properties of any molecule. ”

“ Thus it appears, that although, from what we can see of the known world, its condition seems to tend continually towards the equable diffusion in the form of radiant heat, of all physical energy, the extinction of the stars, and the cessation of all phenomena; yet the world, as now created, may possibly be provided within itself with the means of reconcentrating its physical energies, and renewing its activity and life. ”

“ While he was very skillful as an experimenter, he was not so successful as an expositor. He had received no training as a teacher; following the example of his father he was accustomed to present things after a curiously grotesque fashion; his vision was short-sighted; his speech was not free from hesitation; his imagination outran his vocabulary; and he could not easily put himself at the viewpoint of the average student attending his lectures. ”

“ The geologists say to Lord Kelvin "Look at our arguments." Lord Kelvin says to the geologists "Look at mine." The former call out "cosmogonist"; the latter replied "geological calculus." As a result of the controversy the uniformitarian doctrine has disappeared; but no agreement has been reached about the age of the Earth when it became an abode for life. Kelvin's reasoning can be attacked only by questioning the values which are assumed for the constants, or by denying the conditions which are assumed to be true in applying Fourier's problem to the case of the Earth. ”

“ Another point he insisted on is that matter and energy are things—have objective existence, because their quantity in the universe is constant; force on the other hand cannot be a thing, or have objective existence, because its quantity is indeterminate. "It is only things," he said, "which can be sold." In view of this dictum it is interesting to observe that some courts have held that an electric current cannot be stolen, as it was not a thing. But what is stolen is the energy of the current, and according to Tait's ideas energy is a thing. ”

“ Released from a course of prescribed study and the tyranny of a mathematical trainer, Maxwell rebounded at once to his much-loved researches. The spirit in which he now entered upon his independent career as an investigator may be gathered from an aphorism which he wrote for his own conduct: "He that would enjoy life and act with freedom must have the work of the day continually before his eyes. ”

“ In the Earth they discovered no trace of a beginning, no indication of an end; and some of them, leaving the solid crust of the Earth, and looking out into the Universe could see no signs of age or decay in the solar system. ”

“ In the heavens we discover by their light, and by their light alone, stars so distant from each other that no material thing can ever have passed from one to another; and yet this light, which is to us the sole evidence of the existence of these distant worlds, tells us also that each of them is built up of molecules of the same kinds as those which we find on earth. A molecule of hydrogen, for example, whether in Sirius or in Arcturus, executes its vibrations in precisely the same time. ”

“ Thus space is the ideal relation on which the science of geometry depends; time, cause, likeness, substance, life, are ideal relations on which other sciences depend. Whewell's philosophy was, in fact, a blending of Kant and Bacon. Bacon recommended that a great collection of facts should be made regarding every branch of human knowledge, and conceived that, when this had been done by common observers, philosophers might extract scientific truth from these facts by the application of a right method. ”

“ Suppose V, the original temperature of the Earth, when it had just solidified, to be 7000° F., the temperature of melting rock, then = 98,000,000 years.
Prof. Thomson concluded that the age of the Earth as a possible abode for life must lie between 400,000,000 years and 20,000,000 years. These results came like a bolt from the blue sky on the geologists and biologists of the day. ”

“ Whewell did not grapple with the theory of the tides, that he left—to use his own words— "to bolder and stronger mathematicians." Neglect of the rôle played by theory, especially mathematical theory, in the discovery of truth, is the weak point in Whewell's philosophy. The reduction of observations to empirical laws is only one step in the process and not the most important. ”

“ For eighteen years it has pressed on my mind, that essential principles of thermodynamics have been overlooked by those geologists who uncompromisingly oppose all paroxysmal hypotheses, and maintain not only that we have examples now before us on the Earth, of all the different actions by which its crust has been modified in geological history, but that these actions have never, or have not on the whole, been more violent in past time than they are at present. ”

“ In the same lecture Tait gave a succinct statement of his philosophy of knowledge. "In dealing with physical science" he said, "it is absolutely necessary to keep well in view the allimportant principle that Nothing can be learned as to the physical world save by observation and experiment, or by mathematical deductions from data so obtained. On such a text volumes might be written, but they are unnecessary, for the student of physical science feels at each successive stage of his progress more and more profound conviction of its truth. ”

“ The human soul is a frame made of the refined molecules and exists in the unseen universe, although in life it is attached to the body. Every thought we think is accompanied by certain motions of the coarse molecules of the brain; these motions are propagated through the visible universe, but a part of each motion is absorbed by the fine molecules of the soul. Consequently the soul as well as the body has an organ of memory; at death the soul with its organ of memory is simply set free from association with the coarse molecules of the body. ”

“ Two years before the Quaternion theory had been published; and Herschel referred to it in his presidential address. The closing passage of this address is characteristic of the man: "In these our annual meetings, to which every corner of Britain —almost every nation in Europe—sends forth as its representative some distinguished cultivator of some separate branch of knowledge; where I would ask, in so vast a variety of pursuits which seem to have hardly anything in common, are we to look for that acknowledged source of delight which draws us together, and inspires us with a sense of unity? ”

“ It is certainly a very remarkable, fact that one who fought all his life against ecclesiastical Gallios as regards evolution should, in the matter of the application of physical science to a geological problem, borrow their precise attitude and maxims. ”

“ In the fall of 1848 Lord Rosse invited a number of astronomers to his castle at Parsonstown, Ireland, in order that they might inspect his large reflecting telescope. They were entertained for two weeks, Airy and Hamilton were the principal experts. Airy was able to remove a fault in the mounting of the great mirror, for in practical astronomy he was immensely superior to Hamilton; but as a calculator and scientific genius Hamilton was as much superior. It was on this occasion that Hamilton, influenced by Airy's sarcastic remarks, broke his abstinence resolution. ”

“ At the age of 17 Herschel entered St. John's College, Cambridge. His principal undergraduate friends were Charles Babbage and George Peacock, and all three were impressed with the decline of mathematical science in England. Herschel thus describes the situation: "Students at our universities, fettered by no prejudices, entangled by no habits, and excited by the ardour and emulation of youth, had heard of the existence of masses of knowledge from which they were debarred by the mere accident of position. ”

“ In his second course of lectures he treated of light as a means of investigation. One of the objects taken up was the nature of comets. He held that the nucleus consists, in its inner portions at least, of vapor of some kind in an incandescent state. To explain the cause of this incandescence he brings forward the "greenhouse theory." The glass of a greenhouse is transparent to the higher but opaque to the lower forms of radiation, and hence acts as a trap for the sun's rays. ”

“ Your retirement is an irreparable loss to the University; but if, by relieving you from the arduous duties of the chair, it enables you to devote yourself more entirely to investigation and research, the world will without doubt have the greater gain. ”

“ Peter Guthrie was educated at the Grammar School of Dalkeith, then at the Circus Place School in Edinburgh, and eventually at the Edinburgh Academy, where he had Maxwell for a classmate. Of equal age and similar genius they were drawn into close friendship. They left the Academy together, and took up the same classes of mathematics and physics at the University of Edinburgh. But while Maxwell continued in his studies there for three years, and drank deeply of philosophy and natural science as well as of mathematics and physics, Tait left after one brief session for the University of Cambridge. ”