538 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



such questions, to some of which only can comparatively 

 satisfactory answers be given, in the present state of our 

 knowledge — perhaps to none of them full and certain answers. 

 It was a very wise and happy determination on the part of 

 Lord Salisbury to select as the subject for his most valuable 

 address at the last meeting of the British Association scientific 

 ignorance, rather than scientific knowledge. Not that he 

 might discourage or check research into all the mysteries of 

 nature ; rather to stimulate and encourage it by showing what 

 an immense extent of undiscovered country still remains to be 

 explored ; while giving at the same time a timely hint to some 

 who seem to imagine that modern science is more perfect, 

 homogeneous, and complete than it really is, notwithstanding 

 the very great progress that has been made in all directions 

 during this nineteenth century. To any of our members who 

 have not read that address and the speeches which followed 

 it I would venture to recommend its perusal. It was printed 

 in the London Times of the 9th August last, and doubtless it 

 has appeared in many other publications. 



Akt. LXII. — The Immortality of the Cosmos ; being an 

 Attempt to show that the Theory of Dissipation of Energy 

 is limited to Finite Portions of Space. 



By Professor Bickekton. 



[Read before the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury, 7th November, 



1894.} 



The task of showing that Lord Kelvin's theory of dissipation 

 of energy is limited in its action, that it only applies to finite 

 portions of space, and that there are independent counter- 

 acting agencies in the cosmos taken as a whole, is one not 

 to be lightly undertaken, seeing that the universal application 

 of the theory is practically accepted by the entire thinking 

 world. Nor have I thought lightly of it. The results I shall 

 offer were worked out more than a dozen years ago, and 

 previous to that every step had been submitted over and over 

 again to the judgment of physicists and mathematicians 

 during the three years of its development. I do not suggest 

 any fallacy in Carnot's great generalization founded on his re- 

 versible engine ; nor in Professor James Thomson's deduction 

 from Carnot's work; nor in Lord Kelvin's axiom, as regards 

 any individual body or system, that "it is impossible by 

 means of inanimate material agency to derive mechanical 



