242 



NA TURE 



[Januarv 12, 1905 



and its ideal is expressed in the word Wissenschaft. 

 This word, Dr. Merz considers, " cannot be defined by 

 any single word of the English language." 



" In fact, the German word for science has a much 

 wider meaning than science has in French or English, 

 it applies alike to all the studies which are cultivated 

 under the roof of an ' alma mater ' ; it is an idea 

 specially evolved out of the German university system, 

 where theology, jurisprudence, medicine and the 

 special philosophical studies are all held to be treated 

 'scientifically ' and to form together the universal, all- 

 embracing edifice of human knowledge " (p. 170). 



It was not, however, until the second quarter of the 

 century that the scientific spirit had entered the 

 universities. 



" During these twenty-five years Gauss lived and 

 soared in solitary height — a name only to the German 

 student as Euler had been before him." "The man 

 to whom Germany owes its first great school of mathe- 

 matics was Jacob! " (pp. 1S4-5). 



" German science was essentially cosmopolitan, and 

 the absence of a central body like the Paris Academy, 

 led to an important result, the publication of a large 

 number of periodicals devoted to special branches of 

 science." 



Turning to Great Britain the author says (p. 225) : — 

 " Considering that the great scientific institutions of 

 the Continent — the Paris Institute, the scientific and 

 medical schools in Paris and the German universities — 

 have done so much for the furtherance of science and 

 the diffusion of the scientific spirit, it is natural that 

 we should ask, What have similar institutions done 

 in this country? " 



A perusal of this chapter leads to the general con- 

 clusion that a " national " scientific spirit has never 

 e.xisted in our country. The records of the great dis- 

 coveries made in Britain during the half-century ending 

 1825 (given in a footnote on p. 229) show that in that 

 period hardly a year passed without some great 

 scientific discovery being made by an Englishman, and 

 fully justify the statement that 



" England had during the early part of the century 

 in all but the purely mathematical sciences a greater 

 array of scientific names of the first order than Ger- 

 many, and nearly as great an army as France." 



And yet we find the works of these writers quite un- 

 known in their own country, and in many cases only 

 rescued from oblivion by falling into the hands of the 

 Continental schools of science. We have only to in- 

 stance Dr. Merz's references to the difficulties encoun- 

 tered by Young, Green, Babbage, Boole, Dalton, 

 Faraday, and a host of others, and then to refer to 

 foreign opinions on English science, as expressed by 

 Cuvier and Prof. Moll, and quoted (pp. 235-7), 'i* 

 evidence of the high estimation in which British scien- 

 tific work was held on the Continent. The lack of 

 stimulus to scientific research, the absence of higher 

 mathematical studies, were peculiarly noticeable in the 

 two older universities, where traces of the same spirit 

 survive to this day in spite of the internationalising 

 influences which have played such an important part 

 in recent scientific work. If Britain played a 

 prominent part in the origination of the metric 

 system, and if Continental nations base their zone 

 system of time on the meridian of Greenwich, no better 

 NO. 1837, VOL. 71] 



evidence of the general national apathy to science could 

 be adduced than the fact that Britain is one of the few 

 European States which have not yet universally- 

 adopted either of these systems. 



The last two chapters of vol. i. are devoted to " The 

 Astronomical View of Nature " and " The Atomic 

 View of Nature," while chapters vi. to xii. in vol. ii. 

 deal with the " kinetic or mechanical," the " phi'sical," 

 the " morphological," the " genetic," the " vitalistic,"' 

 the " psycho-physical," and the " statistical " views of 

 nature. These chapters refer more especially to the- 

 second half of the present century, and it is in them 

 that we feel ourselves compelled to single out a few 

 selected points rather than attempt to cover the whole 

 range of subject-matter. 



It is well known that many of our leading scientific 

 ideas can be traced back to very ancient sources ; as in- 

 stances. Dr. Merz refers to the law of gravitation and 

 the atomic theory as known to the Greeks and Romans, 

 the kinetic theory as suggested by Heraclitus, the- 

 vortex atom theory as forestalled by Descartes and 

 Malebranche (pp. 312-4). In passing judgment on. 

 these prior claims, Dr. Merz very right!}' remarks : — 



"It is the scientific method, the exact statement, 

 which was wanting, and which raises the vague- 

 guesses of the philosophical or the dreams of the poetic 

 mind to the rank of definite canons of thought, 

 capable of precise expression, of mathematical analysis 

 and of exact verification." " In every case the 

 awakening touch has been the mathematical spirit, the- 

 attempt to count, to measure, or to calculate." 



Those who flood our breakfast tables with " new "■ 

 theories of the ether or designs of flying machines- 

 only constructed on paper will do well to bear these- 

 remarks in mind. 



Let us now examine how Dr. Merz treats the 

 second law and the ideas of temperature and entropy. 

 In commenting on the work of Lord Kelvin and" 

 Clausius, he says (p. 12S) : — 



" The result was the doctrine of the ' conservation of 

 energy ' — not of heat as Carnot had it — and the em- 

 bodiment of the two correct ideas contained in- 

 dependently in Carnot's and Joule's work in the two- 

 well-known laws of thermodynamics — viz. the con- 

 servation, equivalence and convertibility of energy as 

 expressed in the first law and the doctrine of the avail- 

 ability of energy as expressed in the second law." 



In speaking of entropy (p. 169) he is no less definite 

 in associating that conception with unavailable energy, 

 and he only falls into a pitfall on p. 594, where he 

 speaks of " entropy (or energy which is hidden away) '*■ 

 as if the two were identical and did not differ by a 

 temperature-factor. But the footnote on p. 189 of 

 Maxwell's " Heat," seventh edition, shows that in this 

 he has erred in good company. In the footnote on p. 

 315, in discussing the absolute scale of temperature, he 

 is more unfortunate. The scale " in which every one 

 degree had the same dynamical value " was not the 

 present absolute scale (which approximates fairly 

 closelv to the gas scale), but Lord Kelvin's first abso- 

 lute scale, published in 184S, in which the absolute 

 zero is not —273°, but minus infinity. 



Of the application of statistical methods to the 

 kinetic theory we can speak equally well in regard tO' 

 the completeness with which the author has traversed! 



