116 



SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



23. 

 New mathe- 

 matical 

 sciences. 



24. 



Crystallo- 

 graphy. 



brought about the general recognition of Lavoisier's ideas ; 

 "whereas the more exclusive representatives of chemistry, 

 such as Berthollet and Guyton, held aloof for some con- 

 siderable time. In the earlier syllabus of the lilcole 

 polytechnique, chemistry was brought into a similar 

 proximity with the mathematical branches. And Ber- 

 thollet's ' Statique chimique ' denotes by its title alone 

 the mathematical spirit in which the work was conceived. 

 About that time also two new sciences were, if not 

 invented, at least set on a firm basis, by which the use 

 of mathematics was very largely extended, and by which 

 great realms of interesting facts were made accessible to 

 accurate measurements and exact reasoning. Both these 

 sciences can be claimed by France as almost exclusively 

 her own creations. They are the science of crystallo- 

 graphy and the great theory of probabilities. The former 

 was the work of the Abbe Haiiy ; the latter formed, next 

 to the mechanics of the heavens, the main original con- 

 tribution by which Laplace has perpetuated his name in 

 the history of science. The theory of the Abbe Haiiy, 

 who first taught how crystals are built up from small 

 particles of definite and regular geometrical forms, such as 

 cubes, pyramids, &c., came to the aid of the mineralogists, 

 who before him had vainly groped in the dark, searching 

 for some method by which order and system could be 

 introduced into the lifeless forms of nature as by the 

 methods of Linnaeus and Jussieu it had been introduced 

 into the world of plants and animals. Before Haiiy,. 

 the doctrines of mineralogy had been either attached to 

 geology especially in the celebrated school of Werner, 

 or latterly, after the great developments in chemistry had 



