WHEWKLL'S WRITINGS AND CORRESPONDENCE. 



oompoaiUon of the** tfc-book, involving as it did a thorough study of the 

 fundamental science of Dynamics, was a most appropriate training for his 

 wbamuent labour* in the survey of the sciences in their widest extent. 



It KM alway* appeared to me," my* Mr Todhunter, " that Mr Whewell would have been of 

 ^4 Lmnflt to rtiidonu if b had undertaken a critical revision of the technical language of Mechanics. 

 Ttk UMTUJT WM formed to a great extent by the early writers at an epoch when the subject was 

 nndcratood, and many terms were used without well-defined meanings. Gradually the 

 JH> bran improved, but it is still open to objection." 



In after years, when his authority in scientific terminology was widely 

 recognised, we find Faraday, Lyell, and others applying to him for appropriate 

 expressions for the subject-matter of their discoveries, and receiving in reply 

 systems of scientific terms which have not only held their place in technical 

 treatises, but are gradually becoming familiar to the ordinary reader. 



"Is it not true," Dr Whewell asks in his Address to the Geological Society, 

 " in our science as in all others, that a technical phraseology is real wealth, 

 because it puts in our hands a vast treasure of foregone generalisations ? " 



Perhaps, however, he felt it less difficult to induce scientific men to adopt 

 a new term for a new idea than to persuade the students and teachers of a 

 University to alter the phraseology of a time-honoured study. 



But even in the elementary treatment of Dynamics, if we compare the 

 text-books of different dates, we cannot fail to recognise a marked progress. 

 Those by Dr Whewell were far in advance of any former text-books as regards 

 logical coherence and scientific accuracy, and if many of those which have been 

 published since have fallen behind in these respects, most of them have intro- 

 duced some slight improvement in terminology which has not been allowed to 

 be lost. 



Dr Whewell's opinion with respect to the evidence of the fundamental 

 doctrines of mechanics is repeatedly inculcated in his writings. He considered 

 that experiment was necessary in order to suggest these truths to the mind, 

 but that the doctrine when once fairly set before the mind is apprehended by 

 it as strictly true, the accuracy of the doctrine being in no way dependent 

 on the accuracy of observation of the result of the experiment. 



He therefore regarded experiments on the laws of motion as illustrative 

 experiments, meant to make us familiar with the general aspect of certain phe- 

 nomena, and not as experiments of research from which the results are to be 

 deduced by careful measurement and calculation. 



