Joseph Lovering

“ But unless the body could recover its original figure by elasticity, there was no potential energy and force was annihilated. It is now believed, and to a large extent demonstrated, that the force, apparently lost, has been transformed into heat, electricity, or some other kind of molecular motion, of which the change of shape is only the outward sign. The establishment on a firm foundation of theory and experiment of the so-called conservation of energy, the child of the correlation of physical forces, is one of the first fruits of molecular mechanics. ”

“ Anyhow, they must have not only good memories but astonishing presence of mind, to be always ready to act, and always to act, without mistake, according to the primary laws of their being, in every complication that occurs. And elsewhere, "Action, without will or effort, is to us, constituted as we are, unrealizable, unknowable, inconceivable." The monads of Leibnitz and the demons of Maxwell express in words the personality implied in every manifestation of force. ”

“ All our knowledge of mechanical forces is derived from the conscious effort we ourselves make in producing motion. As this motion employs the machinery of contact, the force of gravitation is wholly outside of all our experience. ”

“ In the phraseology of our mechanics we define matter and force as if they had an independent existence. But we have no conception of inert matter or of disembodied force. All we know of matter is its pressure and its motion. ”

“ At the beginning of this century the universe was as empty as an exhausted receiver : now it has filled up again. Nature's abhorrence of a vacuum has been resuscitated, though for other reasons than these which satisfied the Aristotelians. ”

“ From the mathematical forms in which he has expressed these laws he has attempted to derive the principal experimental results in light, heat, gravitation, electricity and magnetism. Some may think that Mr. Challis has done nothing out clothe his theory in the cast-off garments of an obsolete philosophy. If its dress is old, it walks upon new legs. The interplay between ether and atoms is now brought on to the stage, not as a speculation sustained by metaphysical and theological arguments, but as a physical reality with mathematical supports. ”

“ The world, as science looks at it, is not selfsustaining. We may abandon the hope of explaining gravitation, and make attraction itself the primordial cause. Our refuge then is in the sun. When we qualify the conservation of energy by the dissipation of energy, the last of which is as much an induction of science as the first, the material fabric which we have constructed still demands outward support. Thomson calculates that, within the historical period, the sun has emitted hundreds of times as much mechanical energy as is contained in the united motions of all the planets. ”

“ From the earliest dawn of intellectual life, a general theory of the constitution of matter has been a fruitful subject of debate, and human science and philosophy have ever been dashing their heads against the intractable atoms. ”

“ The fundamental and only admissible idea of force is that of pressure, exerted either actively by the ether against the surface of the atoms, or as reaction of the atoms on the ether by resistance to that pressure. The principle of deriving fundamental physical conceptions from the indications of the senses does not admit of regarding gravity, or any other force varying with distance, as an essential quality of matter, because, according to that principle, we must, in seeking for the simplest idea of physical force, have regard to the sense of touch. ”

“ The ring-vortices may hustle one another, and pass through endless transformations, but they cannot be broken or stopped. Thomson seized upon them as the impersonation of the indestructible but plastic molecule which he was looking for, to satisfy the present condition of physical science. The clement of the new physics is not an atom or a congeries of atoms, but a whirling vapor. The molecules of the same substance have one invariable and unchangeable mass : they are all tuned to one standard pitch and, when incandescent, emit the same kind of light. ”

“ It was proved by Laplace, from data which would now, probably, require a numerical correction, that the velocity of the force of gravitation could not be less than eight million times the velocity of light ; in fact, that it was infinite. Those who believe in action at a distance cannot properly speak of the transmission of gravitation. Force can be transmitted only by matter ; either with it or through it. According to their view, action at a distance is the force, and it admits of no other illustration, explanation or analysis. ”

“ It is the mathematicians and not the metaphysicians who are now discussing the relative merits of the plenum and the vacuum. Newton, in his third letter to Bentley, wrote in this wise : " That gravity should be innate, inherent and essential to matter, so that one body may act upon another at a distance, through a vacuum, without the mediation of anything else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity, that I believe no man, who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking, can ever fall [300] into it." ”

“ Lagrange accepts them all as results of the known laws of mechanics and not as the essence of the laws of nature. The most that physical science can assert is that it possesses no evidence of the destructibility of matter or force.
It is not pretended that the existence of atoms has been or can be proved or disproved. Some chemists think that the atomic theory is the life of chemistry : others have abandoned it. Its importance is lost in that of the molecular theory. ”

“ The plenum reigns everywhere ; the vacuum is nowhere. Even the corpuscular theory of light, as it came from the hands of its founder, required the reinforcement of an ether. Electricity and magnetism, on a smaller scale, applied similar machinery. If there was a fundamental objection to the conception of forces acting at a distance, certainly the bridge was already built by which the difficulty could be surmounted. The turning-point between the old physics and the new physics was reached in 1837, when Faraday published his experiments on the specific inductive capacity of substances. ”

“ The change is recommended by powerful physical arguments, and it disenthralls the theories of science from many metaphysical difficulties which weigh heavily on some minds. On the other hand, the style of mathematics which the innovation introduces is novel and complex ; and good mathematicians may find it necessary to go to school again before they can read and understand the strange analysis. It is feared, that with many, who are not easily deflected from the old ruts, the intricacies of the new mathematics will outweigh the superiority of the new physics. ”

“ Clausius consummated the kinetic theory of gases by his powerful mathematics, and derived from it the experimental laws of Mariotte, Gay-Lussac and Charles. By the assumption of data, more or less plausible, several mathematicians have succeeded in computing the sizes and the masses of the molecules and some of the elements of their motion. It should not be forgotten that mathematical analysis is only a rigid system of logic by which wrong premises conduct the more surely to an incorrect conclusion. ”

“ If it could be shown that all the phenomena displayed in the physical world were simply transmutations of the original energy existing in the molecules, physical science would be satisfied. Where physical science ends, natural philosophy, which is not wholly exploded from our vocabulary, begins. Natural philosophy can give no account of energy when disconnected with an ever present Intelligence and Will. In Herschel's beautiful dialogue on atoms, after one of the speakers had explained all the wonderful exhibition of nature as the work of natural forces, Hermione replies: "Wonderful, indeed! ”

“ Maxwell, in his masterly work on electricity and magnetism, which appeared in 1873, has built a monument to Faraday, and unconsciously to himself also, out of the strongest mathematics. For forty years mathematicians and physicists had labored to associate the laws of electrostatics and electrodynamics under some more general expression. An early attempt was made by Gauss in 1835, but his process was published, for the first time, in the recent complete edition of his works. Maxwell objects to the formula of Gauss because it violates the law of the conservation of energy. ”

“ When it was stated that the absence of infinite divisibility in matter, or the coldness of space, would place a limit upon expansion, and, at the worst, that the medium would be too attenuated to produce a sensible check in the headway of planets, and when, in more recent times, even Encke's comet showed but the slightest symptoms of mechanical decay, it was believed that the motion was, in a practical, if not in a mathematical sense, perpetual. ”

“ Now, by this sense, we obtain a perception of force as pressure, distinct and unique, and not involving the variable element of distance, which enters into the perception of force as derived from the sense of sight alone. ”

“ This energy, he says, is dissipated move and more widely through endless space, and never has been, probably never can be, restored to the sun, without acts as much beyond the scope of human intelligence as a creation or annihilation of energy, or of matter itself, would be. ”

“ It must be said for the mathematicians that they greedily accepted it, and have ever since been most zealous in using it to the best advantage."
It is not expected that the new views of physics will be generally accepted without vigorous opposition. A large amount of intellectual capital has been honestly invested in the fortunes of the other side. ”

“ The music of the spheres has left the heavens and condescended to the rhythmic molecules. There is here no birth or death or variation of species. If other masses than the precise one which represents the elements have been eliminated, where, asks Maxwell, have they gone ? ”

“ They embody the mature reflections of a mathematical physicist at the advanced age of three score years and ten. Challis believes that there is sufficient evidence for the existence of ether and atoms as physical realities. ”