S9^ Intelligence and Miscellaneous Articles. 



CAMBRIDGE PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY. 



[Continued from p. 231.] 



May 21, 1849. — On Hegel's Criticism of Newton's Principia. 

 By Dr. Whewell. 



Parts of Hegel's Encyclopcedia are here examined with the purpose 

 of testing the value of his philosophy, not of defending Newton. 

 Hegel says that the glory due to Kepler has heen unjustly transferred 

 to Newton : confounding thus the discovery of the laws with the 

 discovery of the force from which the laws proceed, in which latter 

 discovery Kepler had no share. Hegel pretends to derive the New- 

 tonian " formula" from the Keplerian law, thus; — by Kepler's law, 



A being the distance, and T the periodic time, — is constant : but 



Newton (Hegel says) ca^/s —-universal gravitation, whence universal 



gravitation is inversely as A^ : — a most absurd misrepresentation of 

 the course of Newton's reasoning. In the same manner Hegel criti- 

 cises, and utterly misrepresents Newton's explanation, for the ellip- 

 tical orbit, of the body's approaching to and receding from the centre; 

 and of the reason why the body moves in an ellipse. Hegel also 

 offers his own explanation of Kepler's laws from his own cL priori 

 assumptions. He says that the motion of the heavenly bodies is not 

 a being pulled this way or that, as is imagined by the Newtonians ; 

 they go along, as the ancients said, like blessed gods. 



XLIX. Intelligence and Miscellaneous Articles. 



RAIN, THE CAUSE OF LIGHTNING. 



To the Editors of the Philosophical Magazine and Journal. 



Gentlemen, Leeds, October 17, 1849.,,. 



S the whole science of meteorology depends upon the number 

 of phaenomena observed, I am led to trouble you with the fol- 

 lowing short notice of a phsenomenon which particularly engaged 

 my attention during its occurrence ; if you deem the communicationiA 

 worthy to be inserted in your Journal, you will oblige 



Your humble Servant, 



T. H. Dixon. 



A 



I observed a paper upon this subject in the Philosophical Magazine 

 for September last, and it reminded me that I had observed a similar 

 phsenomenon, of which I made some notes at the time of its occur- 

 rence. 



On the evening of June 4, 1849, a very severe thunder-storm 

 visited Leeds and the neighbourhood ; my attention was particularly 

 directed to this storm from a peculiar circumstance connected with 



