Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 65.djvu/515

Rh with reality. Stokes, at all events, with little guidance or encouragement from his immediate environment, made himself from the first practically acquainted with the subjects he treated. Generations of Cambridge students recall the enthusiasm which characterized his experimental demonstrations in optics. These appealed to us all; but some of us, I am afraid, under the influence of the academic ideas of the time, thought it a little unnecessary to show practically that the height of the lecture-room could be measured by the barometer, or to verify the calculated period of oscillation of water in a tank by actually timing the waves with the help of the image of a candle-flame reflected at the surface.

The practical character of the mathematical work of Stokes and his followers is shown especially in the constant effort to reduce the solution of a physical problem to a quantitative form. A conspicuous instance is furnished by the labor and skill which he devoted, from this point of view, to the theory of the Bessel's function, which presents itself so frequently in important questions of optics, electricity and acoustics, but is so refractory to ordinary methods of treatment. It is now generally accepted that an analytical solution of a physical question, however elegant it may be made to appear by means of a judicious notation, is not complete so long as the results are given merely in terms of functions defined by infinite series or definite integrals, and can not be exhibited in a numerical or graphical form. This view did not originate, of course, with Stokes; it is clearly indicated, for instance, in the works of Fourier and Poinsot, but no previous writer had, I think, acted upon it so consistently and thoroughly.

We have had so many striking examples of the fruitfulness of the combination of great mathematical and experimental powers that the question may well be raised, whether there is any longer a reason for maintaining in our minds a distinction between mathematical and experimental physics, or at all events whether these should be looked upon as separate provinces which may conveniently be assigned to different sets of laborers. It may be held that the highest physical research will demand in the future the possession of both kinds of faculty. We must be careful, however, how we erect barriers which would exclude a Lagrange on the one side or a Faraday on the other. There are many mansions in the palace of physical science, and work for various types of mind. A zealous, or over-zealous, mathematician might indeed make out something of a case if he were to contend that, after all, the greatest work of such men as Stokes, Kirchhoff and Maxwell was mathematical rather than experimental in its complexion. An argument which asks us to leave out of account such things as the investigation of fluorescence, the discovery of spectrum analysis and the measurement of the viscosity of gases, may seeemseem [sic] audacious; but a