Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/157

Rh he aware of the meaning of his words? Will he deny that, from first to last, during the interval of condensation, heat is being generated? Will he deny to the air the power of radiating such heat? He will not venture to do so. Take, then, the interval of condensation as one-thousandth of a second. I ask him to inform those whom he professes to instruct, what is the probable number of heat-waves which have escaped in this interval. Must they not be numbered by thousands of millions? In fact, by his "merely momentary," he actually assumes that what is momentary in relation to our time-measures is momentary in relation to the escape of ethereal undulations!

Let me now proceed more systematically, and examine his rejoinder point by point. It sets out thus:

"In the notice of Mr. Spencer's works that appeared in the last number of this Review, we had occasion to point out that he held mistaken notions of the most fundamental generalizations of dynamics; that he had shown an ignorance of the nature of proof in his treatment of the Newtonian Law; that he had used phrases such as the Persistence of Force in various and inconsistent significations; and more especially that he had put forth proofs logically faulty in his endeavor to demonstrate certain physical propositions by a priori methods, and to show that such proofs must exist. To this article Mr. Spencer has replied in the December number of the Fortnightly Review. His reply leaves every one of the above positions unassailed."

In my "Replies to Criticisms," which, as it was, trespassed unduly on the pages of the Fortnightly Review, I singled out, from his allegations which touched me personally, one that might be briefly dealt with as an example; and I stated that, passing over other personal questions, as not interesting to the general reader, I should devote the small space available to an impersonal one. Notwithstanding this, the reviewer, in the foregoing paragraph, enumerates his chief positions; asserts that I have not assailed any of them (which is untrue); and then leads his readers to the belief that I have not assailed them because they are unassailable.

Leaving this misbelief to be dealt with presently, I continue my comments on his rejoinder. After referring to the passage I have quoted from Prof. Tait's statement about physical axioms, and after indicating the nature of my criticism, the reviewer says:

"Had Mr. Spencer, however, read the sentence that follows it, we doubt whether we should have heard aught of this quotation. It is: 'Without further remark we shall give Newton's Three Laws; it being remembered that, as the properties of matter might have been such as to render a totally different set of laws axiomatic, these laws must he considered as resting on convictions drawn from observation and experiment, and not on intuitive perception. 'This not only shows that the term 'axiomatic' is used in the previous sentence in a sense that does not exclude an inductive origin, but it leaves us indebted to Mr. Spencer for the discovery of the clearest and most authoritative expression of disapproval of his views respecting the nature of the Laws of Motion."