THE STORY OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY SCIENCE 



Advancement of Science in 1843, and no one heeded it 

 in the least. Two years later he wished to read another 

 paper, but the chairman hinted that time was limited, 

 and asked him to confine himself to a brief verbal synop- 

 sis of the results of his experiments. Had the chair- 

 man but known it, he was curtailing a paper vastly more 

 important than all the other papers of the meeting put 

 together. However, the sj'nopsis was given, and one 

 man was there to hear it who had the genius to appre- 

 ciate its importance. This was William Thomson, the 

 present Lord Kelvin, now known to all the world as 

 among the greatest of natural philosophers, but then 

 only a novitiate in science. He came to Joule's aid, 

 started rolling the ball of controversy, and subsequently 

 associated himself with the Manchester experimenter in 

 pursuing his investigations. 



But meantime the acknowledged leaders of British 

 science viewed the new doctrine askance. Faraday, 

 Brewster, Herschel those were the great names in 

 physics at that day, and no one of them could quite 

 accept the new views regarding energy. For several 

 years no older physicist, speaking with recognized 

 authority, came forward in support of the doctrine of 

 conservation. This culminating thought of our first 

 half-century came silently into the world, unheralded 

 and unopposed. The fifth decade of the century had 

 seen it elaborated and substantially demonstrated in at 

 least three different countries, yet even the leaders of 

 thought did not so much as know of its existence. In 

 1853 Whewell, the historian of the inductive sciences, pub- 

 lished a second edition of his history, and, as Huxley has 

 pointed out, he did not so much as refer to the revolution- 

 izing thought which even then was a full decade old. 



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