The New Physics and Its Evolution by Lucien Poincare
page 25 of 282 (08%)
page 25 of 282 (08%)
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progressions, in coming under the general laws of rational mechanics;"
and the same physicist showed clearly that in his mind this connexion of phenomena with mechanics had a deep and philosophical reason, when, in the fine discourse pronounced by him at the opening ceremony of the Congrès de Physique in 1900, he exclaimed: "The mind of Descartes soars over modern physics, or rather, I should say, he is their luminary. The further we penetrate into the knowledge of natural phenomena, the clearer and the more developed becomes the bold Cartesian conception regarding the mechanism of the universe. There is nothing in the physical world but matter and movement." If we adopt this conception, we are led to construct mechanical representations of the material world, and to imagine movements in the different parts of bodies capable of reproducing all the manifestations of nature. The kinematic knowledge of these movements, that is to say, the determination of the position, speed, and acceleration at a given moment of all the parts of the system, or, on the other hand, their dynamical study, enabling us to know what is the action of these parts on each other, would then be sufficient to enable us to foretell all that can occur in the domain of nature. This was the great thought clearly expressed by the Encyclopædists of the eighteenth century; and if the necessity of interpreting the phenomena of electricity or light led the physicists of last century to imagine particular fluids which seemed to obey with some difficulty the ordinary rules of mechanics, these physicists still continued to retain their hope in the future, and to treat the idea of Descartes as an ideal to be reached sooner or later. Certain scholars--particularly those of the English School--outrunning |
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