SPECULATIONS ON PHYSICAL SCIENCE 8$ 



A very just and discriminating judge of Lamarck's 

 work, Professor Cleland, thus refers to his writings 

 on physics and chemistry : 



" The most prominent defect in Lamarck must be 

 admitted, quite apart from all consideration of the 

 famous hypothesis which bears his name, to have 

 been want of control in speculation. Doubtless the 

 speculative tendency furnished a powerful incentive 

 to work, but it outran the legitimate deductions from 

 observation, and led him into the production of vol- 

 umes of worthless chemistry without experimental 

 basis, as well as into spending much time in fruitless 

 meteorological predictions." {Encyc. Brit., Art. LA- 

 MARCK.) 



How a modern physicist regards Lamarck's views 

 on physics may be seen by the following statement 

 kindly written for this book by Professor Carl Barus 

 of Brown University, Providence : 



" Lamarck's physical and chemical speculations, 

 made throughout on the basis of the alchemistic 

 philosophy of the time, will have little further inter- 

 est to-day than as evidence showing the broadly 

 philosophic tendencies of Lamarck's mind. Made 

 without experiment and without mathematics, the 

 contents of the three volumes will hardly repay 

 perusal, except by the historian interested in certain 

 aspects of pre-Lavoisierian science. The temerity 

 with which physical phenomena are referred to oc- 

 cult static molecules, permeated by subtle fluids, the 

 whole mechanism left without dynamic quality, since 

 the mass of the molecule is to be non-essential, is 

 markedly in contrast with the discredit into which 

 such hypotheses have now fallen. It is true that an 

 explanation of natural phenomena in terms " le feu 

 ^thdr6, le feu calorique, et le feu fixd " might be in- 



