366 



SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



37. 

 Ampere and 

 Weber de- 

 velop tlie 

 astrouomi- 

 cal view. 



Yet the great variety, more than the exact measurement 

 of phenomena, attracted the attention of natural philoso- 

 phers in this new field. And when through Davy,Berzelius, 

 and Faraday in different ways the importance of electric 

 action in chemical processes became established, it was 

 natural that from this school an entirely different view of 

 electrical and magnetic phenomena should emanate : we 

 may term it in opposition to the astronomical the phys- 

 ical view of phenomena. This view, which, as the astron- 

 omical view had done, found later on its expression in a 

 mathematical formula, will occupy our attention in a sub- 

 sequent chapter. It has in the course of the second half 

 of the century very largely expelled the other and rival 

 view from the domain of molar and molecular physics. 

 But the astronomical view, with its largely developed 

 mathematical apparatus, was not easily defeated : it was 

 quite able to grapple with even such complicated processes 

 as the discoveries of Oersted and Faraday had revealed. 

 In the opinion of many Continental thinkers it won its 

 greatest laurels when, under the treatment of Ampere in 

 France and of Neumann and Weber in Germany, the 

 perplexing interactions of magnets, diamagnets, and 



1843 ('Philos. Transactions,' 1843, 

 p. 303, &c.) : "An energetic source 

 of light, of heat, of chemical action, 

 and of mechanical power, we only 

 require to know the conditions un- 

 der which its various effects may 

 be most economically and ener- 

 getically manifested to enable us 

 to determine whether the high ex- 

 pectations formed in many quarters 

 of some of these applications are 

 founded on reasonable hope or on 

 fallacious conjecture." Forty years 

 later Lord Kelvin, in his address 



" On the Electrical Units of Meas- 

 urement" (1883: see 'Popular 

 Lectures and Addresses,' vol. i. p. 

 76), could still speak of the com- 

 paratively recent date at which 

 "anj'thing that could be called 

 electric measurement had come to 

 be regularly practised in most of the 

 scientific laboratories of the world," 

 wliereas such measurements had 

 then been for many years " familiar 

 to the electricians of the submarine 

 cable factories and testing sta- 

 tions." 



