The concepts and theories of modern physics / By J.B. Stallo.

  • John Stallo
Date:
1900
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The concepts and theories of modern physics / By J.B. Stallo. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    and of all degrees.and forms of consistency and aggre- gation, moving about at all rates of velocity, in all di- rections, and in orbits of every degree of eccentricity. These masses would be consolidated, and movements, both of rotation and revolution, would be generated in the bodies so formed by their collisions. At this point the question obtrudes itself : how can a theory, which seeks to derive the orderly, symmetrical, and harmonious world as we know it from the wildest congestion of aboriginal differences and anomalies— from a spring-head of utter incongruity and confusion —be made to account for the regularities and coinci- dences whose simple and natural explanation was the conspicuous merit of the hypothesis of Laplace ? An answer to this question is sought, by the advo- cates of the new theory, in an appeal to a principle long since established by Laplace himself. This principle relates to the fact that, amid all the disturbances caused by the mutual attractions of the planetary bodies, there exists an invarial>le plane passing through the center of gravity of the whole system, about which these bodies perpetually oscillate with but slight deviations on either side. If on this invariable plane we project the areas described by the radii rectores of the several elements of mass in a given time, and multiply each mass into its respective area thus projected, the sum of the products is a maximum, and the rate of its increase is constant.* Such a plane exists, not only for the solar system, but for any system of bodies controlled solely by their mut- ual attractions. Xow, it is evident that both the sum and the rate of its increase, of the products of the masses * Cf. Laplace, Mdcanique Celeste, Ure partic, liv. ii, chap. vii. (“ Bes inegalitcs seculaires des mouvemens celestes.) The theory was first pub- lished in the Journal do I’Ecole Polytcchniquc, 1798.