[ 464 ] 

 LXVII. Intelligence and Miscellaneous Articles. 



ON THE INEXPEDIENCY OF ERRONEOUS HYPOTHESES. 



To the Editors of the Philosophical Magazine and Journal. 



Gentlemen, 

 HTHE following remarks on the inexpediency of provisionally adopt- 

 ■*- ing in Science hypotheses avowedly erroneous were suggested by 

 a recent lecture of a learned Professor whose authority in scientific 

 matters is justly entitled to great weight. While freely admitting 

 the probably erroneous nature of the hypothesis, he suggested the 

 adoption of the " two-fluid " theory of electricity, on the score of its 

 convenience in the explanation of electrical phenomena — rejecting, 

 however, with some little inconsistency, the qualitative terms " vi- 

 treous " and " resinous," and adopting the merely quantitative ad- 

 juncts "positive " and " negative," which are essentially associated 

 with the equally erroneous " one-fluid" theory. 



Even the convenience of this hypothesis is not very obvious ; for 

 although the idea of an electric " fluid " flowing over a conductor is 

 not at first sight inappropriate, still, that a fluid should travel at the 

 rate of 250,000 miles in a second (the velocity of electric transmis- 

 sion in a copper wire as approximately determined by Sir C. Wheat- 

 stone) does great violence to our conceptions of fluid-motion. 



Might not the nature of electricity be as intelligibly, and with 

 much greater verisimilitude, explained to a partially scientific audi- 

 ence thus : — 



If any two substances, or two portions of the same substance, be 

 energetically rubbed against each other, a molecular agitation or 

 disturbance of the particles is set up, which is recognized as heat. 

 But if certain substances be rubbed against each other, a molecular 

 agitation, differing in kind from the former in some manner at pre- 

 sent unknown, is produced in the two substances, conferring upon 

 them certain physical properties, known as electricity , which, being 

 in some respects of a mutually opposite character, have, for the sake 

 of distinction, been termed positive and negative. Thus, if a glass 

 tube and a pad of silk, a stick of sealing-wax and a pad of flannel, 

 be respectively rubbed against each other, then the glass and the 

 flannel, the sealing-wax and the silk, respectively manifest similar 

 properties ; the former are said to be positively, the latter nega- 

 tively electrified ; and so forth, theory being further dispensed with 

 in the exposition of electrical phenomena. 



Nor is this hypothesis at all improbable, as there are some grounds 

 for believing that the friction that developes electricity does not de- 

 velope heat, although this has not yet been fully demonstrated. 

 Moreover, the substitution of heat for electricity and of electricity 

 for heat at the point of junction of two dissimilar metals was some 

 time since shown by the writer ; and the evolution of light and heat 

 at a point of great resistance interposed in a voltaic circuit, as in 

 the electric lamp, are strong arguments in favour of the dynamic, in 

 contradistinction to the material, theory of electricity. 



