refpetling Heat or Caloric. J I 



allow me to notice) have been overlooked ? and whether, If 

 all of them had been attended to, and the legitimate inferences 

 been drawn from them, the theory now generally received 

 would ever have been admitted into fcience ? 



The ground I am about to take may perhaps e.xpofc me to 

 the danger of being eonfidered as an innovator, or, what may 

 be deemed worfe by fome, a fceptic as to certain opinions, 

 rendered refpectable by the great names that have embraced 

 and maintained them ; and at the fame time extremely plau- 

 fible from the apparent facility with which they are applied 

 to explain many phenomena that daily prefent themfelves to 

 the eye of every attentive obferver. My only anfwer is, that 

 I am hi fearch of truth ; and fo decided an enemy to mere 

 theoretical fpeculations, that I neither admit myfelf, nor wifli 

 others to admit in phyfics what cannot be proved to be truth. 

 When the human mind acquiefces on any ground fliort of 

 this, it is either through mifconception, indolence, or pufil- 

 lanimity, than which nothing has tended more to retard 

 fcience and fhackle men with prejudices, leading them to 

 receive great names for argument, and, for demonitration, 

 long quotations. But, to proceed, I ufe the term beat to 

 denote that fubftance which poffelTcs thofe properties, is go- 

 verned by thofe laws, and produces thofe effects which fhall 

 be immediately enumerated; and I prefer it to the term 

 caloric* for no other reafon but becaufe the latter is em- 

 ployed by many to denote heat exifting in a certain ftate, in 

 which, they fay, it may be eonfidered as having actually loft 

 its original character : whereas I hold, and I even hope to 

 convince the members of this Society, that it invariably re- 

 tains the fame character, properties, and mode of action. 



' The term caloric has been adopted in the new nomenclature to avoid 

 that ambiguity and mifconception which might, it is faid, arife from em- 

 ploy iryrthe fame term to exprefs a fubftance, and the fenfation produced 

 by the action of that fubftance. By the fame mode of reafoning, all the 

 (ubjiatttives mould be changed in any language that has fimilar verbs* 

 But fuppole the argument for change, in the prefent inftancc, to have full 

 force in foan: languages, it has little or none in regard to the Englifh, 

 which employs the word -warmth to exprefs the fenfation occafioned by 

 beat. I (hall, however, ufe the terms heat and caloric indifferently. 



(A) Heat 



