Fielding Hudson Garrison

“ Of the possibly infinite number of attributes of eternal substance postulated by Spinoza, the human mind can apprehend only two—thought and extension, and even here thought and sensation are the fundamental facts, while "all else is an inference and is probably essentially unlike what it appears to our senses." It seems impossible to break down the fact that there is no absolute causal connection between the two primary categories of Spinoza, who has anticipated most of modern psychology. ”

“ In close connection with the theory of catalysis is the nature of chemical purity and the fact that chemical changes rarely proceed directly to their final product, but usually pass through a series of intermediate stages. For a long time chemists have noticed that absolutely dry or pure substances will not interact directly upon each other, but the cooperation of a third substance is necessary for chemical change. ”

“ In Darwin's picture of nature the quiet woods and waters, so calm and peaceful on the surface, are in reality centers of "strange and cruel life," the struggle and turmoil of creatures continually preying upon each other, even trees and plants and the tiniest particles of animate bodies taking part in a definite, never-ending war for existence. ”

“ Mind seems almost like an assemblage or complex of causes in itself, and is probably related to the brain as music to the violin. Destroy the violin and there will be an end of its music, but it needs other coefficients than the violin itself to get music out of it. Ostwald has himself admitted the force of Leibnitz's argument, that no mechanical explanation of cerebral action will ever account for the genesis of thought or the nature of consciousness: "Nihil in intellectu quod non prius in sensu, nisi intellectus ipse." ”

“ The merits of the case are well summed up in Gibbs's final statement: "The notions which we use in vector analysis are those which he who reads between the lines will meet on every page of the greatest masters of analysis, or of those who have probed deepest the secrets of nature, the only difference being that the vector analyst, having regard for the weakness of the human intellect, does as the early painters who wrote beneath their pictures "This is a tree." "This is a horse." ”

“ A partial concentration may be brought in a system, but only at the expense of greater dissipation, and the sum total is always an increase in dissipation." [26] Through the labors of Joule and Kelvin, Maxwell and Boltzmann, Gibbs and Helmholtz, Carnot's simple generalization about heat engines has been elevated to the dignity of an irrevocable law of nature, a principle of scientific determinism, giving one of the most complete and satisfactory answers that man can furnish to the great question: How does any event in the material universe come to pass? ”

“ Gibbs's treatment of the subject is interesting as affording a mathematical criterion of what catalysis is and what it is not. It will be remembered that when the entropy of an isolated chemical system, say a bar of steel, has attained a maximum or its free energy a minimum value, the final state of the substance in question has been called by Gibbs a "phase of dissipated energy," implying that it has become physically and chemically inert, so that its equilibrium will not be sensibly disturbed by the presence of other substances or by such small physical agencies as an electric spark. ”

“ Human thought as a function of the human brain may disappear with man himself, but this does not annul the possibility of mind existing in manifold ways elsewhere in the universe. The electric waves of wireless telegraphy undoubtedly existed as motions in the air before man discovered and labeled them and may continue to exist and be apprehended in other spheres of thought when man is gone. ”

“ Matter, in the words of Sir Oliver Lodge, may be physically resolved "perhaps, into electricity, and that into some hitherto unimagined mode of motion of the ether," but no dynamic theory of the ether can resolve the ether into nothing. Assuming thought to be a mode of energy, the metaphysical argument that mind is at the bottom of motion seems more likely, in the last analysis, than that motion should be the cause of mind, for we can not conceive of a thing moving unless something moves it. ”

“ Gibbs was concerned only with applying the laws of mechanics to physical chemistry. Compared with the case of nature, he says, thermodynamic systems are "of an ideal simplicity." To Ostwald, however, mind and matter are but forms of energy, which is the only thing eternal and immortal. "We can deal with measurable things, never with the unknown heart of nature," says Ostwald, yet his basic principle, energy, is to all intents and purposes identical with the eternal infinite substance of Spinoza, Goethe and Haeckel, "sive Deus, sive Natura naturans, sive Anima mundi appelletur." ”

“ By the second law (irreversible increase of entropy in natural processes) there is still greater probability that it tends to a final state of thermal equilibrium or death; and since the universe itself is so great, there is sufficient probability that other worlds than ours may deviate from thermal equilibrium. As a graphic exposition of this theory, which shows the vast scope of the second law of thermodynamics, a curve can be plotted with the variables H and the time as coordinates, to visualize what takes place in the universe. ”

“ We can, if we choose, regard mathematics as a metaphysical diversion or employ it practically as a means of interpreting the physical facts of nature, empirically ascertained by man. In these matters, says Gibbs elsewhere, "Nature herself takes us by the hand and leads us along by easy steps as a mother teaches her child to walk," [11] and he would have agreed with Langley that man may put questions to nature if he will, but is in no position to dictate her answers to them. ”

“ Individual thinking may be the result of physico-chemical differences of structure or substance in the brain, but apart from the evidence of mind in the evolution and structure of the universe, different aspects of mind, as ideas, sensations and sentiments, seem to have an individual life of their own so far as man is concerned, and are "things" in the sense that, like external forces, they have profoundly influenced and determined the actions of individuals and of entire races. ”

“ Maxwell has observed that everything irregular, even the motion of a bit of paper falling to the ground, tends, in the long run, to become regular, and this is the rationale of testing the second law with respect to gases. In the kinetic theory of gases, the first scientific statement of which is due to Clausius, we assume a gas to be an assemblage of elastic spheres or molecules, flying in straight lines in all directions, with swift haphazard collisions and repulsions, like so many billiard balls. ”

“ Falling in love, listening to a Beethoven symphony, identifying oneself with nature, are to Ostwald instances of dissipation of energy like any other. [23] Philosophy of this kind does not clear up the mystery of the relation of mind and matter. Descartes assumed that mind and matter exist apart as parallels, having no causal connection with each other. Spinoza held that neither can exist apart; indeed, he sometimes asserts their practical identity as different modes of the same eternal substance. ”

“ A true theory of catalysis will enable us to solve the problem of the transmutation of the elements, of which we have already had examples in the substances derived from radium, and the recent derivation of tellurium from copper by Sir William Ramsay. The action of animal and vegetable protoplasm is probably catalytic and the chemist can now make some vegetable substances, such as indigo or alizarine, more cheaply and purely than the plants themselves do. ”

“ As Spinoza pointed out long ago, Nature could 'not change these laws which flow from its very being, without ceasing to be itself, and the conclusion of physics and biology that Nature is never on the side of the weak becomes, as far as man is related to the material universe, identical with Spinoza's denial of final causes. ”

“ When a gas is brought into a new physical state, its initial stage is, in Boltzmann's argument, a highly improbable one from which the system of molecules will continually hasten towards successive states of greater probability until it finally attains the most probable one, or Maxwell's state of equilibrated partition of energy and thermal equilibrium. ”

“ From the view-point of mathematical chemistry there are many chemical substances that are relatively and approximately pure, but absolute purity of a chemical nature is, in Whetham's dictum, a more often a pious dream than an accomplished fact. ”

“ Our experience with the real world, however, teaches us that it is towards uniformity." All actual mechanical systems are, as Gibbs pointed out long before, in reality thermodynamic, [10] and it seems odd that the critics who rejected Boltzmann's proof, because it did not agree with the facts of nature, should now, for a logical quibble, take exception to Gibbs's because it does. It has been predicted that future truth in physical science will often be found in the sixth place of decimals, for not everything in nature works out according to specifications. ”

“ Physicists have found that the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution of velocities is satisfactory for gases whose molecules move independently and at random; but when the molecules are supposed to be subject to one another's influence, it does not account for certain facts of nature such as the measured specific heats of gases or individual peculiarities of their spectra. ”

“ In general the properties of a thermoelectric system are determined by the entropy function, and the entropy and energy in a thermoelectric network are not, as previously supposed, stored in the conductors, but, as we see in the electric transmission of motor power from a waterfall like Niagara to an engine or railway car, actually travel with the moving charge of electricity itself. In short, "entropy can be located in an electric charge." ”

“ Electrochemical Thermodynamics.—One of the most important features of energetics is Gibbs's theory of the galvanic cell which shows the close interrelation existing between chemical, thermal and electric energy. The earliest pioneer in this field was Lord Kelvin, and, prior to 1878, physicists had accepted the Joule-Kelvin theory that the electromotive force of a galvanic apparatus is the mechanical equivalent of the total chemical energy liberated per unit strength in unit time. ”

“ Gibbs has shown that in a system of two phases, one component of which is very small, the chemical potential of the dilute component is proportional to the logarithm of its density. As the density of the smaller component becomes less and less, its potential tends to an infinite value, [4] which means that, at the limit, when concentration becomes evanescent, "the removal of the last traces of any impurity would demand infinite expenditure of available energy." ”

“ Ideal Gases and Gas-Mixtures.—It is in the physics of gases that the application of the molecular theory has proved most successful and the laws and equations relating to gaseous states are of considerable accuracy owing to the fact that practically all gases act alike. Although Gibbs made no explicit assumptions as to molecular dynamics, his treatment of gaseous states agrees so well with the kinetic theory that Boltzmann thought he must have had the latter constantly before his mind in framing his fundamental equations. ”

“ The probability of the latter state of affairs is smaller, the further such a state is removed from thermal equilibrium, but it can be made as great as we please to assume the universe to be great. But there is necessary and sufficient probability that our earth as we know it is in its present state. ”

“ Applying similar reasoning to the material universe, Boltzmann finds that the following assumptions are possible: either the whole universe is in a highly improbable (i. e. initial) state, or, as the facts of physical astronomy would seem to indicate, the part of it known to us is in a state of thermal equilibrium, with certain districts, such as the earth we live on, noticeably removed from this condition. ”

“ The chemical equilibrium of solids in contact with liquids, including the delicate mathematical conditions for the formation of crystals in mother liquor, is treated dynamically as a matter of stresses and strains, and this together with the theory of interfacial formations and liquid films will embrace the possible physics of colloid substances. ”

“ The differential equation relating to average values in the ensemble is found to correspond with the fundamental equation of thermodynamics; the modulus of distribution of ensembles turns out to be analogous to the temperature, while the average index of probability in phase is the analogue of the entropy with reversed sign, and being a minus quantity, is found to decrease just as entropy increases. ”

“ Of such suspensions animal and vegetable bodies are largely made up, protoplasm being a sort of microscopic emulsion, the physiological action of which seems to be bound up with chemical, thermal, electric and osmotic changes between its semi-permeable membranes and surfaces of discontinuity and the various surface tensions and surface energies derived from the free energy of chemical or electric change. ”

“ Dead protoplasm, such as a coagulated blood clot, is an irreversible colloid consisting of a fixed network, the meshes of which contain the "sol." There is no evidence of internal structure in living protoplasm, and Hardy supposes that structure in dead protoplasm is produced by submortem or postmortem changes associated with coagulation. Whether the phase rule can be applied to colloids is still an open question bound up with the complex nature of bodies of which we know so little. ”

“ In monatomic gases like argon, helium and mercury, the ratio of the specific heats will account for the three degrees of molecular freedom ascribed to them by the mathematical theory, but in the case of diatomic gases, like hydrogen or oxygen, the theory calls for six degrees of freedom, while experiment will account for only five. ”

“ American contributions to physics, from Franklin to Michelson, have been characterized by originality of invention and experiment. The work of Gibbs has a place apart as that of a mathematical theorist whose ideas have found wide application in the main current of modern thought, and his true position is best described in his own often-quoted estimate of his great predecessor, Clausius. ”

“ In the reasoning of energetics, the paradox is explained by saying [14] that the more nearly alike the gases are, the slower will be the process of diffusion, so that work or available energy might indeed be gained, but only after the lapse of indefinite or infinite time, if we have such time at our disposal. ”

“ Certainly, therefore, Hertz is right when he says: 'The rigour of science requires that we distinguish well the undraped figure of Nature itself from the gay-coloured vesture with which we clothe it at our pleasure.' But I think the predilection for nudity would be carried too far if we were to forego every hypothesis. Only we must not demand too much from hypotheses." Boltzmann, Ibid., 413. ↑ The principal opponent of the Maxwell-Boltzmann partition of energies was Lord Kelvin in his "Nineteenth Century Clouds over the Dynamical Theory of Heat and Light." ”