Elementary Principles in Statistical Mechanics

Abstract

WHERE a branch of science has been approached exclusively from the deductive side or exclusively from the experimental side, it is far easier to form a correct estimate of our state of knowledge in it than is the case where experimental and deductive methods have been continuously worked side by side. The study of rational dynamics has afforded, excellent mental training for those who have made the greatest marks in the world as physicists, notwithstanding the fact that the conclusions arrived at in rational dynamics are in direct contradiction to ordinary experience. Thus it is impossible to verify experimentally that the times taken by particles to slide down perfectly smooth chords of a vertical circle are equal, and the phenomena of Nature are far too complicated to allow of an experimental test of the velocity with which a boy would have to throw a cricket ball in vacuo in order to give it a horizontal range of 200 yards. In the study of thermodynamics, on the other hand, where the experimental has preceded the deductive treatment, as has been the case ever since Joule discovered the so-called mechanical equivalent of heat, much confusion and failure to appreciate correctly our state of knowledge have necessarily resulted, and the only way of evolving order out of chaos is to formulate a theory on a purely deductive basis founded on certain hypotheses. The interest of the theory from a physical standpoint will then depend in the agreement or want of agreement between the conclusions of the theory and the results of observation.

Elementary Principles in Statistical Mechanics.

By J. Willard Gibbs Pp. xviii + 207. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons; London: Arnold, 1902.) Price 10s. 6d. net.