Mechanical philosophy and the emergence of physics in Britain: 1800-1850

Annals of Science

Volumn 33, Issue 1, 1976, Pages 3-29

  Smith, Crosbie ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF KENT   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 0039692815     PISSN: 00033790     EISSN: 1464505X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00033797600200111     Document Type: Article

References (176)

1. J. E. McGuire, ‘Boyle’s conception of nature’, Journal of the history of ideas, 33 (1972), 523-542 for similar problems in the seventeenth century.
2. J. T. Merz, A history of European scientific thought in the nineteenth century (1st ed., 1904-1912, Edinburgh: repr. 1965, New York, Dover Publ.), for related ‘ views of nature ‘—the astronomical, the atomic, the kinetic or mechanical, and the physical. These strands, however, are more general than my divisions.
3. L. L. Laudan, ‘Thomas Reid and the Newtonian turn of British methodological thought ‘, The methodological heritage of Newton (ed. R. E. Butts and J. W. Davis: 1970, Oxford), 103-131 for an account of Reid’s Common Sense philosophy. For a view of the influence of Common Sense philosophy
4. R. Olson, Scottish philosophy and British physics (1975, Princeton).
5. Francis Oakley, ‘Christian theology and the Newtonian science’, Church history, 30 (1961), 433-457 for an account of the origins and nature of the Voluntarist tradition.
6. I hope to deal with the influence of theology on William Thomson’s thermodynamics in a forthcoming paper in The British journal for the history of science. For Whawell
7. W. F. Cannon, ‘The problem of miracles in the 1830s’, Victorian studies, 4 (1960), 5-32.
8. J. Herivel, Joseph Fourier. The man and the physicist (1975, Oxford), 216-228 for an account of Fourier’s viewpoint and so-called ‘ positivism ‘.
9. I. Grattan-Guinness and J. B. Ravetz, Joseph Fourier: 1768-1830 (1972, Cambridge, Mass) for’ a survey of his life and work, based on a critical edition of his memoir on the propagation of heat, presented to the Institut de France in 1807 ‘.
10. For the approval of Fourier by British thinkers W. R. Hamilton, William Thomson and Heaviside
11. E. Whittaker, A history of the theories of aether and electricity: the classical theories (2nd ed., 1951, London), 130n.
12. J. Herivel, Joseph Fourier. The man and the physicist (1975, Oxford), 223.
13. Joseph Fourier, The analytical theory of heat (trans. A. Freeman: 1878, Cambridge), 1
14. Joseph Fourier, Theorie analytique de la chaleur (1822, Paris).
15. William Thomson and P. G. Tait, Treatise on natural philosophy (1867, Oxford), preface.
16. R. Kargon, ‘Model and analogy in Victorian science: Maxwell’s critique of the French physicists’, Journal of the history of ideas, 30 (1969), 423-436. Kargon realises that the British physicists (Thomson, Rankine, Maxwell) do not go all the way towards ‘ positivism ‘, but he tends to see them as strongly influenced by engineering conceptions. The influence of Common Sense philosophy seems to be more convincing.
17. For an account of the Irish school, see A. J. McConnell, ‘The Dublin mathematical school in the first half of the nineteenth century’, Proceeding? of the Royal Irish Academy, 50 (1944—1945), 75-88.
18. Humphrey Lloyd, W. R. Hamilton and James MacCullagh, Dictionary of scientific biography (ed. C. C. Gillispie: 1970-New York), vols. 6 and 8.
19. L. P. Williams, Michael Faraday (1965, London), 364
20. P. M. Heimann, ‘Conversion of forces and the conservation of energy’, Gentaurus, 18 (1974), 147-161, esp. pp. 153-155.
21. J. B. Morrell. ‘The University of Edinburgh in the late eighteenth century: its scientific eminence and academic structure’, Isis, 62 (1971), 158-171.
22. In what follows I shall deal with this system largely in relation to Edinburgh, where such a viewpoint seems to have originated.
23. John Robison, Elements of Mechanical Philosophy, being the substance of a course of lectures on that science, vol. 1 (1804, Edinburgh).
24. ‘Physics’, Encyclopaedia Britannica (3rd ed., 1797-1801, Edinburgh), vol. 16, 637-659.
25. Many of Robison’s other Encyclopaedia contributions were edited by David Brewster into A system of Mechanical Philosophy (4 vols., 1822, Edinburgh).
26. Robison, ‘Physics’ Elements of Mechanical Philosophy, being the substance of a course of lectures on that science, vol. 1 (1804, Edinburgh), 640.
27. Robison, ‘Physics’ Elements of Mechanical Philosophy, being the substance of a course of lectures on that science, vol. 1 (1804, Edinburgh), 638.
28. Robison, ‘Physics’ Elements of Mechanical Philosophy, being the substance of a course of lectures on that science, vol. 1 (1804, Edinburgh), 638-642.
29. Robison, ‘Physics’ Elements of Mechanical Philosophy, being the substance of a course of lectures on that science, vol. 1 (1804, Edinburgh), 637, 642.
30. Robison, ‘Physics’ Elements of Mechanical Philosophy, being the substance of a course of lectures on that science, vol. 1 (1804, Edinburgh), 643.
31. The four senses of ‘natural philosophy’ employed by Robison refer to the study of (i) all nature, both material and immaterial, (ii) all material nature, (iii) the laws and causes in the material world, and now (iv) sensible motions.
32. Robison, ‘Physics’ Elements of Mechanical Philosophy, being the substance of a course of lectures on that science, vol. 1 (1804, Edinburgh), 647.
33. Robison, ‘Physics’ Elements of Mechanical Philosophy, being the substance of a course of lectures on that science, vol. 1 (1804, Edinburgh), 643.
34. Robison, ‘Physics’ Elements of Mechanical Philosophy, being the substance of a course of lectures on that science, vol. 1 (1804, Edinburgh), 646.
35. Robison, ‘Physics’ Elements of Mechanical Philosophy, being the substance of a course of lectures on that science, vol. 1 (1804, Edinburgh), 645.
36. For Robison’s debt to the Common Sense school see Richard Olson, ‘The reception of Boscovich’s ideas in Scotland’, Isis, 60 (1969), 91-103.
37. Robison, ‘Physics’ Elements of Mechanical Philosophy, being the substance of a course of lectures on that science, vol. 1 (1804, Edinburgh), 647.
38. Robison, ‘Physics’ Elements of Mechanical Philosophy, being the substance of a course of lectures on that science, vol. 1 (1804, Edinburgh), 647.
39. Robison, ‘Physics’ Elements of Mechanical Philosophy, being the substance of a course of lectures on that science, vol. 1 (1804, Edinburgh), 15. Reid held that it was an inborn principle which gave rise to our notion of causation. As Laudan (footnote 3) suggests, Reid was much indebted to Newton’s science, as well as to his opinions on induction, causation and hypotheses, while at the same time was reinterpreting Newton in the light of eighteenth century philosophical debates.
40. Robison, ‘Physics’ Elements of Mechanical Philosophy, being the substance of a course of lectures on that science, vol. 1 (1804, Edinburgh), 647.
41. Robison, ‘Physics’ Elements of Mechanical Philosophy, being the substance of a course of lectures on that science, vol. 1 (1804, Edinburgh), 16.
42. Robison, ‘Physics’ Elements of Mechanical Philosophy, being the substance of a course of lectures on that science, vol. 1 (1804, Edinburgh), 647-648. Motions for Robison were the real and only objects of our observation. In motion only the ideas of space and time were involved—subjects of mathematics (p. 654). It was this mathematical and observational character of the concept of motion which gave certainty to the science of mechanical philosophy. Forces, on the other hand, were metaphorical and verbal derivatives (Elements, 92).
43. Isaac Newton, Mathematical principles of natural philosophy (translated by Andrew Motte and Florian Cajori: 2 vols., 1934, repr. 1971, California), vol. 1, 27-28.
44. Robison, ‘Physics’ Elements of Mechanical Philosophy, being the substance of a course of lectures on that science, vol. 1 (1804, Edinburgh), 88.
45. Robison, ‘Physics’ Elements of Mechanical Philosophy, being the substance of a course of lectures on that science, vol. 1 (1804, Edinburgh), 4-5.
46. Robison, ‘Physics’ Elements of Mechanical Philosophy, being the substance of a course of lectures on that science, vol. 1 (1804, Edinburgh), 99. The view that Newton’s laws provide a sufficient foundation for all dynamics presents problems.
47. C. Truesdell, ‘A program toward rediscovering the rational mechanics of the age of reason’, Archive for history of exact sciences, 1 (1960), 1-36, esp. p. 32, for a discussion of the principle of moment of momentum.
48. Robison, ‘Physics’ Elements of Mechanical Philosophy, being the substance of a course of lectures on that science, vol. 1 (1804, Edinburgh), 100-106.
49. Robison, ‘Physics’ Elements of Mechanical Philosophy, being the substance of a course of lectures on that science, vol. 1 (1804, Edinburgh), 106.
50. Robison, ‘Physics’ Elements of Mechanical Philosophy, being the substance of a course of lectures on that science, vol. 1 (1804, Edinburgh), 124-126.
51. Robison, ‘Physics’ Elements of Mechanical Philosophy, being the substance of a course of lectures on that science, vol. 1 (1804, Edinburgh), 127-128.
52. Robison, ‘Physics’ Elements of Mechanical Philosophy, being the substance of a course of lectures on that science, vol. 1 (1804, Edinburgh), 126.
53. Laudan, ‘Thomas Reid and the Newtonian turn of British methodological thought ‘, The methodological heritage of Newton (ed. R. E. Butts and J. W. Davis: 1970, Oxford), 127-131.
54. Robison, ‘Physics’ Elements of Mechanical Philosophy, being the substance of a course of lectures on that science, vol. 1 (1804, Edinburgh), 673-674.
55. Robison, ‘Physics’ Elements of Mechanical Philosophy, being the substance of a course of lectures on that science, vol. 1 (1804, Edinburgh), 648.
56. Robison, ‘Physics’ Elements of Mechanical Philosophy, being the substance of a course of lectures on that science, vol. 1 (1804, Edinburgh). 648-651.
57. Robison Elements of Mechanical Philosophy, being the substance of a course of lectures on that science, vol. 1 (1804, Edinburgh), 651. Robison justification for including optics was that light took time to travel a distance. Motion, whether by matter or by an undulation in an elastic medium, was thus involved. Robison’s attitude towards the nature of heat, electricity and magnetism was governed by his anti-hypothetical view and he remarked A system of Mechanical Philosophy (footnote 14), vol. 4, 177 After what we have seen in the late experiments of that philanthropic philosopher Count Rumford on the production of heat by friction, we think that we cannot be too cautious on what grounds we admit invisible agents to perform the operations of Nature His main concern was with sensible motions. For an analysis of heat in the early part of the period in Scotland and England
58. R. G. Olson, ‘Count Rumford, Sir John Leslie, and the study of the nature and propagation of heat at the beginning of the nineteenth century’, Annals of science, 26 (1970), 273-304.
59. Robison, ‘Physics’ Elements of Mechanical Philosophy, being the substance of a course of lectures on that science, vol. 1 (1804, Edinburgh), 647.
60. John Playfair, Outlines of Natural Philosophy, being the heads of lectures delivered in the University of Edinburgh (3rd ed., 1819, Edinburgh), 5.
61. John Playfair, Outlines of Natural Philosophy, being the heads of lectures delivered in the University of Edinburgh (3rd ed., 1819, Edinburgh), 1.
62. John Playfair, Outlines of Natural Philosophy, being the heads of lectures delivered in the University of Edinburgh (3rd ed., 1819, Edinburgh), 2.
63. John Playfair, Outlines of Natural Philosophy, being the heads of lectures delivered in the University of Edinburgh (3rd ed., 1819, Edinburgh), 16.
64. William Whewell, An elementary treatise on mechanics (1819, Cambridge), 4.
65. Robison, ‘Physics’ Elements of Mechanical Philosophy, being the substance of a course of lectures on that science, vol. 1 (1804, Edinburgh), vol. 1, especially paragraph 497, where he sees the principles of composition and resolution of forces as derivative from the principles of dynamics.
66. John Playfair, Outlines of Natural Philosophy, being the heads of lectures delivered in the University of Edinburgh (3rd ed., 1819, Edinburgh), 16-17.
67. John Playfair, Outlines of Natural Philosophy, being the heads of lectures delivered in the University of Edinburgh (3rd ed., 1819, Edinburgh), 17-18 and 339.
68. John Playfair, Outlines of Natural Philosophy, being the heads of lectures delivered in the University of Edinburgh (3rd ed., 1819, Edinburgh), 3.
69. John Playfair, Outlines of Natural Philosophy, being the heads of lectures delivered in the University of Edinburgh (3rd ed., 1819, Edinburgh), 341.
70. The notebooks are in the Queen’s University Library, Belfast, Thomson Collection, ‘Exercises in natural philosophy 1811-12’; and in the Cambridge University Library, Kelvin Collection, ‘ Notebook of natural philosophy class 1839-40 ‘. I hope to deal with this Glasgow dimension more fully in my forthcoming paper on William Thomson (footnote 5).
71. John Playfair, ‘La Place, Traite de Mechanique [sic] Celeste’, Edinburgh review, 22 (1808), 249-284.
72. S. P. Thompson, Life of Lord Kelvin (2 vols., 1910, London), vol. 1, 12. and Queen’s LTniversity Library, Belfast, Thomson Collection. Introductory Lecture at Glasgow College by James Thomson, 6 November 1832.
73. S. P. Thompson, Life of Lord Kelvin (2 vols., 1910, London), vol. 1, 239-251.
74. For an account of this period, see S. P. Thompson, Life of Lord Kelvin (2 vols., 1910, London), vol. 1, 252-295.
75. H. I. Sharlin, ‘William Thomson’s dynamical theory: an insight into a scientist’s thinking’, Annals of science, 32 (1975), 133-147, considers Thomson’s role in the change from a statical view, associated with imponderables, to the dynamical view, employing energy. He sees the influence of Faraday and Joule as the key to Thomson’s conversion from the former to the latter view, and argues that this conversion took place from the mid-1840s. However, as I hope to show elsewhere and indicate here, Thomson’s dynamical view originated in his early student days under Meikleham in the late 1830s, and his switch from force to energy as the primary dynamical concept resulted as much from conceptual and philosophical thinking as from experimental or mathematical influences
76. Herivel, Joseph Fourier. The man and the physicist (1975, Oxford), 224-228.
77. J. Herivel, Joseph Fourier. The man and the physicist (1975, Oxford), 23.
78. D. S. L. Cardwell, From Watt to Clausius. The rise of thermodynamics in the early industrial age (1971, London), 235.
79. J. P. Joule, ‘On the changes of temperature produced by the rarefaction and condensation of air’, Scientific papers (2 vols., 1887, London), vol. 1, 189.
80. W. Thomson, ‘An account of Carnot’s theory of the motive power of heat, with numerical results deduced from Regnault’s experiments on steam’ (read January 1849), Mathematical and physical papers (6 vols., 1882-1911, Cambridge), vol. 1, 118.
81. Cambridge University Library, Kelvin Collection, Draft of the dynamical theory of heat, manuscript PA 128. Quotation by kind permission of the librarian.
82. Although professor only from 1828 to 1831, Lardner was widely known for his Cabinet cyclopaedia series in the 1830s. Lardner was educated at Trinity College, Dublin.
83. A. J. McConnell, ‘The Dublin mathematical school in the first half of the nineteenth century’, Proceeding? of the Royal Irish Academy, 50 (1944—1945), 75-88.
84. Statement by the Council of the University of London, explanatory of the nature and objects of the Institution (1827, London), 34.
85. Dionysiua Lardner, A discourse on the advantages of natural philosophy and astronomy as part of a general and professional education. Being an introductory lecture delivered in the University of London on the 28th October, 1828 (1828, London).
86. Dionysiua Lardner, A discourse on the advantages of natural philosophy and astronomy as part of a general and professional education. Being an introductory lecture delivered in the University of London on the 28th October, 1828 (1828, London), 8.
87. Dionysiua Lardner, A discourse on the advantages of natural philosophy and astronomy as part of a general and professional education. Being an introductory lecture delivered in the University of London on the 28th October, 1828 (1828, London), 8-9. He therefore differed from Robison in his stronger conviction that mechanical philosophy can be used successfully in the study of the internal parts of matter, even though it may not yet have been so used.
88. Dionysiua Lardner, A discourse on the advantages of natural philosophy and astronomy as part of a general and professional education. Being an introductory lecture delivered in the University of London on the 28th October, 1828 (1828, London), 9-10.
89. Dionysiua Lardner, A discourse on the advantages of natural philosophy and astronomy as part of a general and professional education. Being an introductory lecture delivered in the University of London on the 28th October, 1828 (1828, London), 11-16.
90. Thomas Young, A course of lectures on Natural Philosophy and the mechanical arts (2 vols., 1807, London). By ‘ arts ‘ was meant the practical arts, relating to the control of nature by, for example, the use of machines.
91. G. N. Cantor, ‘Henry Brougham and the Scottish methodological tradition’, Studies in the history and philosophy of science, 2 (1971), 69-89, for differing approaches to an aether.
92. A. Wood, Thomas Young natural philosopher 1773-1829 (1954, Cambridge), 18-40.
93. T. Young, ‘Life of Robison’, Miscellaneous works of the late Thomas Young (ed. George Peacock: 3 vols., 1855, London), vol. 2, 505-517.
94. Thomas Young, A course of lectures on Natural Philosophy and the mechanical arts (2 vols., 1807, London), vol. 2, 130-138. Robison’s articles on, for example, dynamics, projectiles, impulsion and rotation are asterisked.
95. Thomas Young, A course of lectures on Natural Philosophy and the mechanical arts (2 vols., 1807, London), vol. 1, 6.
96. Thomas Young, A course of lectures on Natural Philosophy and the mechanical arts (2 vols., 1807, London), vol. 1, 15. Mechanics was also seen as founded on self-evident laws by thinkers such as D’Alembert and Euler, for instance.
97. Thomas Young, A course of lectures on Natural Philosophy and the mechanical arts (2 vols., 1807, London), vol. 1, 17.
98. Thomas Young, A course of lectures on Natural Philosophy and the mechanical arts (2 vols., 1807, London), vol. 1, 18.
99. Thomas Young, A course of lectures on Natural Philosophy and the mechanical arts (2 vols., 1807, London), vol. 1, 59-60.
100. Thomas Young, A course of lectures on Natural Philosophy and the mechanical arts (2 vols., 1807, London), vol. 1, 21; vol. 2, 140.
101. Thomas Young, A course of lectures on Natural Philosophy and the mechanical arts (2 vols., 1807, London), vol. 1, 257.
102. Thomas Young, A course of lectures on Natural Philosophy and the mechanical arts (2 vols., 1807, London), vol. 1, 257-258.
103. Thomas Young, A course of lectures on Natural Philosophy and the mechanical arts (2 vols., 1807, London), vol. 1, 258.
104. Thomas Young, A course of lectures on Natural Philosophy and the mechanical arts (2 vols., 1807, London), vol. 1, 13-14
105. Thomas Young, A course of lectures on Natural Philosophy and the mechanical arts (2 vols., 1807, London), vol. 1, 487. Chemistry is excluded from the Lectures on the pragmatic grounds that its extent demands separate and minute discussion.
106. Thomas Young, A course of lectures on Natural Philosophy and the mechanical arts (2 vols., 1807, London), vol, 1, 488-489. 631-657.
107. T. J. N. Hilken, Engineering at Cambridge University 1783-1965 (1967, Cambridge), 8-12. The so-called Senate House examination was seen as the main test of ability for students who sought the B.A. degree.
108. The best known text for students in this period was James Wood and S. Vince, The principles of mathematics and natural philosophy (4 vols., 1795-1799, Cambridge), which covered algebra, fluxions, mechanics, hydrostatics, optics and astronomy.
109. W. K. R. Ball, A history of the study of mathematics at Cambridge (1889, Cambridge), 117.
110. W. K. R. Ball, A history of the study of mathematics at Cambridge (1889, Cambridge), 118.
111. J. M. Dubbey, ‘The introduction of the differential notation to Great Britain’, Annals of science, 19 (1963), 37-48, for an account of events from Woodhouse’s 1803 work to Whewell’s 1819 Treatise on mechanics.
112. Ball, A history of the study of mathematics at Cambridge (1889, Cambridge), 120. Lacroix’s work was published as Traite elementaire du calcul dijferentiel et du calcul integral (1802, Paris). Woodhouse published his Elementary treatise on plane astronomy in 1812 and his Physical astronomy in 1818.
113. Isaac Todhunter, William Whewell, D.D. (2 vols., 1876, London).
114. R. Robson and W. F. Cannon, ‘William Whewell, F.R.S. (1794-1866)’, Notes and records of the Royal Society of London, 19 (1964), 168-191.
115. The other personalities include Airy, Herschel and Forbes, all of whom had special links with Cambridge.
116. William Whewell, An elementary treatise on mechanics (1819, Cambridge), 1-2.
117. This approach is characteristic of John Herschel’s Preliminary discourse on the study of natural philosophy (1830, London).
118. W. F. Cannon, ‘John Herschel and the idea of science’, Journal of the history of ideas, 22 (1961), 215-239, esp. p. 238. Cannon sees Herschel as a thinker whose interests range over ‘ all the sciences of inanimate nature ‘ (p. 222).
119. William Whewell, An elementary treatise on mechanics (1819, Cambridge), 3.
120. William Whewell, An elementary treatise on mechanics (1819, Cambridge), 8.
121. William Whewell, An elementary treatise on mechanics (1819, Cambridge), 4.
122. W. Whewell, A treatise on dynamics (1823, Cambridge), 394.
123. W. Whewell, A treatise on dynamics (1823, Cambridge), 400-403.
124. W. Whewell, An elementary treatise on mechanics (5th ed., 1836, London), 161.
125. William Whewell, An elementary treatise on mechanics (1819, Cambridge), 7-8.
126. William Whewell, An elementary treatise on mechanics (1819, Cambridge), 3.
127. Compare this viewpoint with Robison’s privileged status assigned to dynamics.
128. Henry Coddington, An elementary treatise on optics (1823, Cambridge), based on Whewell’s lectures on the subject, and also drawing on Young’s Lectures; Miles Bland, The elements of hydrostatics (1824, Cambridge).
129. G. B. Airy, Mathematical tracts (1826 and 1831, Cambridge), on physical astronomy (mainly lunar theory), the figure of the earth, precession and nutation, the calculus of variations, with a fifth section, on the undulatory theory of light, added to the second (1831) edition.
130. R. Murphy, Elementary principles of the theories of electricity, heat, and molecular actions [part I on electricity only] (1833, Cambridge).
131. J. H. Pratt, The mathematical principles of mechanical philosophy (1836, Cambridge).
132. W. N. Griffin, A treatise on optics (1838, Cambridge).
133. Mathematical problems and examples, arranged according to the subjects, from the Senate House examination papers, 1821 to 1836 (1837, Cambridge).
134. Isaac Newton, Mathematical principles of natural philosophy (translated by Andrew Motte and Florian Cajori: 2 vols., 1934, repr. 1971, California), vol. 1, 17 for the view that nature is geometrical and rational, and that ‘ the errors are not in the art, but in the artificers ‘.
135. W. Whewell, History of the inductive sciences (3 vols., 1837, London).
136. Isaac Todhunter, William Whewell, D.D. (2 vols., 1876, London), 185-186, notes that Whewell’s unity lay in his methodology of discovery, but not in his subject matter.
137. W. Whewell, Of a liberal education, part II (1850, Cambridge), 1-4.
138. Encyclopaedia metropolitana or, universal dictionary of knowledge (26 vols., 1829—1845, London).
139. Isaac Todhunter, William Whewell, D.D. (2 vols., 1876, London), vol. 1, 35, and vol. 4 of the Encyclopaedia, 140-170. Herschel wrote the article on light in the same volume.
140. Encyclopaedia metropolitana, vol. 1, 10.
141. J. C. Shairp, P. G. Tait and A. Adams-Reilly, Life and letters of James David Forbes (1873, London), 40-53.
142. J. C. Shairp, P. G. Tait and A. Adams-Reilly, Life and letters of James David Forbes (1873, London), 55.
143. G. E. Davie, The democratic intellect: Scotland and her universities in the nineteenth century (1961, Edinburgh), 86-200.
144. J. C. Shairp, P. G. Tait and A. Adams-Reilly, Life and letters of James David Forbes (1873, London), 68-73.
145. J. C. Shairp, P. G. Tait and A. Adams-Reilly, Life and letters of James David Forbes (1873, London), 71.
146. J. D. Forbes to William Whewell, 29 May 1831, Add. MS.a.2041, Whewell papers, Trinity College Library, Cambridge; quoted by kind permission of the librarian.
147. William Whewell to J. D. Forbes, 9 June 1831.
148. Isaac Todhunter, William Whewell, D.D. (2 vols., 1876, London), vol. 2, 119-120.
149. Isaac Todhunter, William Whewell, D.D. (2 vols., 1876, London), 119.
150. Isaac Todhunter, William Whewell, D.D. (2 vols., 1876, London), 120. Poisson’s work was published as Traits de. mecanique (2 vols., 1811, Paris) and Pouillet’s as Siemens de physique experimental et de meteorologie (2 vols., 1827-30, Paris).
151. Isaac Todhunter, William Whewell, D.D. (2 vols., 1876, London), 121.
152. William Whewell to J. D. Forbes, 14 July 1831.
153. J. C. Shairp, P. G. Tait and A. Adams-Reilly, Life and letters of James David Forbes (1873, London), 83-86.
154. J. C. Shairp, P. G. Tait and A. Adams-Reilly, Life and letters of James David Forbes (1873, London), 98.
155. J. D. Forbes to William Whewell, 8 August 1833.
156. Forbes’s lecture notes were destroyed at his own request after his death. For a survey of the immense range of the aether view
157. J. T. Merz, A history of European scientific thought in the nineteenth century (1st ed., 1904-1912, Edinburgh: repr. 1965, New York, Dover Publ.), vol. 2, 3-94. Contributions flowed from the Dublin school (Lloyd and MacCullagh for example), the Cambridge School (Airy, Stokes and others), and Baden Powell at Oxford.
158. S. G-. Brush, ‘The wave theory of heat: a forgotten stage in the transition from the caloric theory to thermodynamics’, British journal for the history of science, 5 (1970), 145-167.
159. J. C. Shairp, P. G. Tait and A. Adams-Reilly, Life and letters of James David Forbes (1873, London), 127-140.
160. J. C. Shairp, P. G. Tait and A. Adams-Reilly, Life and letters of James David Forbes (1873, London), 129.
161. William Whewell to J. D. Forbes, 1 March 1839.
162. Isaac Todhunter, William Whewell, D.D. (2 vols., 1876, London), vol. 2, 278.
163. Philip Kelland, Theory of heat (1837, Cambridge), 3. Kelland also edited the second odition of Young’s Lectures in 1845.
164. Philip Kelland, Theory of heat (1837, Cambridge), 64.
165. S. P. Thompson, Life of Lord Kelvin (2 vols., 1910, London), vol. 1, 18-19.
166. S. G-. Brush, ‘The wave theory of heat: a forgotten stage in the transition from the caloric theory to thermodynamics’, British journal for the history of science, 5 (1970), 157.
167. Philip Kelland, Theory of heat (1837, Cambridge), 3.
168. S. G-. Brush, ‘The wave theory of heat: a forgotten stage in the transition from the caloric theory to thermodynamics’, British journal for the history of science, 5 (1970), 163. For an account of the development of the mathematical and physical aspects of Rankine’s thermodynamics.
169. K. Hutchison. ‘Der TJrsprung der Entropie- funktion bei Rankine und Clausius’, Annals of science, 30 (1973), 341-364.
170. E. E. Daub, ‘Atomism and thermodynamics’, Isis, 58 (1967), 293-303.
171. W. J. M. Rankine, ‘Outlines of the science of energetics’ (read 2 May 1855), Miscellaneous scientific papers (ed. W. J. Millar: 1881, London), 209-229.
172. See sub-section 2.4 above. Neither Clausius nor Helmholtz, Thomson and Rankine’s German contemporaries in thermodynamics, gave primacy to energy as a concept.
173. W. J. M. Rankine, ‘On the conservation of energy and Note to a letter on the conserva- tion of energy’, Philosophical magazine, (4) 17 (1859), 250-253 and 347-348.
174. W. J. M. Rankine, ‘On the conservation of energy and Note to a letter on the conserva- tion of energy’, Philosophical magazine, (4) 17 (1859), 253.
175. W. J. M. Rankine, ‘Preliminary dissertation on the harmony of theory and practice in mechanics’ (1855); reprinted in Rankine, A manual of applied mechanics (17th ed., 1904, London), 10-11.
176. J. C. Shairp, P. G. Tait and A. Adams-Reilly, Life and letters of James David Forbes (1873, London), 491.