Lectures on some recent advances in physical science : with a special lecture on force / by P.G. Tait.

Date:
1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures on some recent advances in physical science : with a special lecture on force / by P.G. Tait. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    improvement of one branch has led, almost immedi- ately, to important extensions of other branches. Under this head we may also include those very great advances which are due to improvements in our mathe- matical methods. Fourthly. What may be called casual discoveries, though they are often of very great importance ; such as, for instance, the discovery of fluorescence, with its manifold consequences, and the invention of the pro- cesses of photography. Such discoveries, instead of being, as in old days, wondered at and left isolated, are now^ at once attacked on all sides by numberless' en- thusiastic experimenters. Fifthly. There is another class, very numerous but more difficult to exactly describe. As a single ex- ample of this class, I may mention the modern statis- tical methods of treating certain problems of physical science, especially those connected with the movements of particles of gases and liquids, to which I shall advert at considerable length in the course of these lectures I have now to consider how I should best commence the analysis of these various heads; and I think the proper method will be first to sketch the subject as if from a distance-to point out a few of the principal peaks which we have to ascend, and of the more formi- dable abysses which we have to avoid ; striving all the while to introduce as early as possible some of those new technical terms which are absolutely indispensable to accuracy and definiteness, and which, therefore can not be too soon mastered. ' Natural Philosophy, as now regarded, treats generally 01 the physical universe, and deals fearlessly alike with quantities too great to be distinctly conceived, and with
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