364 



SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



the astronomical view of phenomena had been established 

 and strengthened mainly by a development of the New- 

 tonian philosophy. They belonged to another school, 

 which approached that great field of research from the 

 purely experimental side, mainly, so far as Davy was 

 concerned, from the side of chemistry, which, dealing 

 with the qualitative, not merely the quantitative, proper- 

 ties of matter, was at that period almost entirely thrown 



(Maxwell's Introduction to the 

 ' Researches, ' p. xlix sqq. ) Caven- 

 dish's electrical work seems to have 

 remained unnoticed abroad. Cu- 

 vier, who fully appreciates him as 

 a pioneer in modern chemistry, 

 does not refer to his electrical 

 researches, and in Continental 

 works his name is hardly men- 

 tioned in connection with elec- 

 trical science. He however clearly 

 belongs to the same lineage as 

 Davy and Faraday, whose breadth 

 of experimental observation some- 

 what prevented them from fully 

 assimilating the results of Coulomb 

 and his school, which moved in 

 narrower but more precise lines. 

 If Cavendish was unknown abroad 

 as an electrician, Coulomb was 

 little known in England. Whewell, 

 who did more than any other to 

 make known the researches of the 

 mathematical school (see his article 

 in the 'Encyclopaedia Metropoli- 

 tana,' 1826, and his British Associ- 

 ation Report, 1835), could state in 

 the first edition of his ' History of 

 the Inductive Sciences' (1837) that 

 " the reception of the Coulombian 

 theory has hitherto not been so 

 general as might have been reason- 

 ably expected from its very beauti- 

 ful accordance with the facts which 

 it contemplates" (3d ed., vol. iii. 

 p. 28). He then refers to the ex- 

 periments of Snow Harris. These 

 experiments, as well as those of 



Faraday, carried on about the same 

 time, dealt largely with the proper- 

 ties of dielectrics and of what we 

 now call the electric field, a subject 

 almost entirely neglected by the 

 mathematical school of that period. 

 It was not till 1845 that William 

 Thomson (Lord Kelvin) cleared up 

 the whole subject in a memoir, 

 " On the Mathematical Theory of 

 Electricity in Equilibrium " (see 

 'Reprint of Papers,' &c., p. 15). 

 He there refers to the fact that 

 " many have believed Coulomb's 

 theory to be overturned by the in- 

 vestigations " of Snow Harris and 

 Faraday, and he therefore pro- 

 poses to show that "all the experi- 

 ments which they have made hav- 

 ing direct reference to the distri- 

 bution of electricity in equilibrium 

 are in full accordance with the 

 laws of Coulomb, and must there- 

 fore be considered as confirming 

 the theory" (p. 18). He thus 

 brought together the two inde- 

 pendent lines of research and 

 thought, the mathematical and the 

 experimental, represented by the 

 school of Gauss and Weber abroad, 

 and by Faraday in England, and 

 suggested those further researches 

 of which Maxwell's ' Treatise on 

 Electricity and Magnetism ' is the 

 great exponent. See the preface 

 to this work, p. xi, &c., 1873 ; also 

 Maxwell's ' Scientific Papers,' vol. 

 ii. pp. 258, 302, 304. 



