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 PART III.

FORCE.

CHAPTER VI.

English teach mechanics as an experimental science; on the Continent it is taught always more or less as a deductive and à priori science. The English are right, no doubt. How is it that the other method has been persisted in for so long; how is it that Continental scientists who have tried to escape from the practice of their predecessors have in most cases been unsuccessful? On the other hand, if the principles of mechanics are only of experimental origin, are they not merely approximate and provisory? May we not be some day compelled by new experiments to modify or even to abandon them? These are the questions which naturally arise, and the difficulty of solution is largely due to the fact that treatises on mechanics do not clearly distinguish between what is experiment, what is mathematical reasoning, what is convention, and what is hypothesis. This is not all.