XLIV. Introductory Lecture on Experimental Physics. 



THE University of Cambridge, in accordance with that law of its evolution, 

 by which, while maintaining the strictest continuity between the successive 

 phases of its history, it adapts itself with more or less promptness to the 

 requirements of the times, has lately instituted a course of Experimental 

 Physics. This course of study, while it requires us to maintain in action all 

 those powers of attention and analysis which have been so long cultivated in 

 the University, calls on us to exercise our senses in observation, and our hands 

 in manipulation. The familiar apparatus of pen, ink, and paper will no longer be 

 sufficient for us, and we shall require more room than that afforded by a seat at 

 a desk, and a wider area than that of the black board. We owe it to the 

 munificence of our Chancellor, that, whatever be the character in other respects 

 of the experiments which we hope hereafter to conduct, the material facilities 

 for their full development will be upon a scale which has not hitherto been 

 surpassed. 



The main feature, therefore, of Experimental Physics at Cambridge is the 

 Devonshire Physical Laboratory, and I think it desirable that on the present 

 occasion, before we enter on the details of any special study, we should con- 

 sider by what means we, the University of Cambridge, may, as a living body, 

 appropriate and vitalise this new organ, the outward shell of which we expect 

 soon to rise before us. The course of study at this University has always 

 included Natural Philosophy, as well as Pure Mathematics. To diffuse a sound 

 knowledge of Physics, and to imbue the minds of our students with correct 

 dynamical principles, have been long regarded as among our highest functions, 

 and very few of us can now place ourselves in the mental condition in which 

 even such philosophers as the great Descartes were involved in the days before 

 Newton had announced the true laws of the motion of bodies. Indeed the 

 cultivation and diffusion of sound dynamical ideas has already effected a great 

 change in the language and thoughts even of those who make no pretensions 



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