Method and results : essays / by Thomas H. Huxley.

  • Huxley, Thomas Henry, 1825-1895.
Date:
1893
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Method and results : essays / by Thomas H. Huxley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    mechanical theory, there remained a vast number of phenomena, such as those of light, heat, elec- tricity, magnetism, and those of the physical and chemical changes which do not involve molar motion. Newton's corpuscular theory of light was an attempt to deal with one great series of these phenomena on mechanical principles, and it maintained its ground until, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the undulatory theory proved itself to be a much better working hypo- thesis. Heat, up to that time, and indeed much later, was regarded as an imponderable substance, caloric; thing which was absorbed by bodies when they were warmed, and was given out as they cooled; and which, moreover, was capable of entering into a sort of chemical combination with them, and so becoming latent. Rumford and Davy had given a great blow to this view of heat by proving that the quantity of heat which two portions of the same body could be made to give out, by rubbing them together, was practically illimitable. This result brought philosophers face to face with the contradiction of supposing that a finite body could contain an infinite quantity of another body; but it was not until 1843, that clear and unquestionable experimental proof was given of the fact that there is a definite relation between mechanical work and heat; that so much work always gives rise, under the same conditions, to so much heat, and so much heat to so much