RECORDS 



OF 



GENERAL SCIENCE. 



Article I. 



Memoir of Dr. Thomas Young. By M. Arago. 



{Concluded from page 332.) 



Discussions with regard to priority of discovery, even 

 when influenced by national prejudices, would never become 

 bitter, if they could be resolved by fixed rules, but, in cer- 

 tain cases, the first idea is every thing ; in others, the de- 

 tails present the principal difficulties ; while in other re- 

 spects, the merit appears to depend less on the conception 

 of a theory, than on its demonstration. 



To remove the difficulties which surround the settlement 

 of such a question, I have sought for an example in which 

 the claims of the two pretenders to the invention may be 

 likened to those of Champollion and Young, and which 

 has been decisively settled. This example, I consider, 

 exists in the interferences, laying entirely aside for the hiero- 

 glyphical question, the references appended to the memoir 

 of M. de Guignes. 



Hooke, in fact, had stated before Young, that the rays 

 of light interfere, just as the last had supposed, before 

 Champollion, that the Egyptian hieroglyphics are some- 

 times phonetic. Hooke did not prove his hypothesis di- 

 rectly ; the proof of the phonetic values assigned by Young 

 to different hieroglyphics, could only be deduced from 

 readings which have not been made — which have never 

 existed. 



vol. m. 2 D 



