256 PETER GUTHRIE TAIT 



a keen eye for faults of expression, for looseness of phrase, and for lack 

 of precision in the ideas which it was intended to communicate. 



As examples of the severely critical vein we may refer to his two articles 

 on Sensation and Science in Nature, Vol. iv, July 6, 1871, and Vol. vi, July 4, 

 1872. The first is devoted to an exposure of the extraordinary misconception 

 on the part of Professor Haughton as to the physical significance of the 

 Principle of Least Action. The criticism is deservedly severe. In a writer 

 of Haughton's standing and reputation the misconception was inexcusable, 

 for the simple reason that his words would carry weight and be accepted as 

 scientific truth by very many of his hearers and readers. Haughton's aim 

 was to apply to the animal kingdom this principle of least action, which 

 appears sometimes in various more or less irreconcileable guises as " the 

 minimum of effort," "the least quantity of material," "a wonderful economy 

 of force," "a performing its allotted task (by a muscle) with the least amount 

 of trouble to itself," " minimum amount of muscular tissue," and so on. 



"A very Proteus is this so-called principle," wrote Tait. "There is no 

 knowing where to have it It is a minimum, an economy, a least quantity, 

 and what not ; sometimes of effort, sometimes of material, then of trouble, 

 and anon of muscular tissue, or of force of the same kind as that with which 

 the bee constructs its cell ! But the most curious feature about it is that in 

 none of its metamorphoses does it in the slightest degree resemble the Least 

 Action of Maupertuis, with which it would seem throughout to be held as 

 identical." 



The second article on Sensation and Science dealt with a book on Comets 

 and things in general by Professor Zollner of Leipzig, an extraordinary man of 

 brilliant but unequal parts. The work, as Tait described it, "deals not alone with 

 the nature of Comets, the inferiority of British to German physicists, and the 

 grave offence of which a German is guilty when he sees anything to admire 

 except at home ; but also with the errors of Thomas Buckle, the relations of 

 Science to Labour and Manufacture, and the analogies of development in 

 Languages and Religion." Zollner was specially wrath with Helmholtz for 

 sanctioning the German translation of Thomson and Tail's Natural Philo- 

 sophy. Tait could not bring himself to take the man and his writings 

 seriously ; but Helmholtz thought it necessary in his Preface to the Second 

 Part of the German edition to reply at considerable length to Zollner's 

 attacks. A translation (by Crum Brown) of this reply is given in Nature, 

 Vol. x, 1874. 



