Page:Scientific Papers of Josiah Willard Gibbs.djvu/26

xviii and of the action of semi-permeable diaphragms and osmotic pressure, showed that many facts, which had previously seemed mysterious and scarcely capable of explanation, are in fact simple, direct and necessary consequences of the fundamental laws of thermodynamics. In the discussion of mixtures in which some of the components are present only in very small quantity (of which the most interesting cases at present are dilute solutions) the theory is carried as far as is possible from à priori considerations; at the time the paper was written the lack of experimental facts did not permit the statement, in all its generality, of the celebrated law which was afterward discovered by van't Hoff; but the law is distinctly stated for solutions of gases as a direct consequence of Henry's law and, while the facts at the author's disposal did not permit a further extension, he remarks that there are many indications "that the law expressed by these equations has a very general application."

It is not surprising that a work containing results of such consequence should have excited the profoundest admiration among students of the physical sciences; but even more remarkable than the results, and perhaps of even greater service to science, are the methods by which they were attained; these do not depend upon special hypotheses as to the constitution of matter or any similar assumption, but the whole system rests directly upon the truth of certain experiential laws which possess a very high degree of probability. To have obtained the results embodied in these papers in any manner would have been a great achievement; that they were reached by a method of such logical austerity is a still greater cause for wonder and admiration. And it gives to the work a degree of certainty and an assurance of permanence, in form and matter, which is not often found in investigations so original in character.

In lecturing to students upon mathematical physics, especially in the theory of electricity and magnetism, Professor Gibbs felt, as so many other physicists in recent years have done, the desirability of a vector algebra by which the more or less complicated space relations, dealt with in many departments of physics, could be conveninently and perspicuously expressed; and this desire was especially active in him on account of his natural tendency toward elegance and conciseness of mathematical method. He did not, however, find in Hamilton's system of quaternions an instrument altogether suited to his needs, in this respect sharing the experience of other investigators who have, of late years, seemed more and more inclined, for practical purposes, to reject the quaternionic analysis, notwithstanding its beauty and logical completeness, in favor of a simpler and more direct treatment of the subject. For the use of his students, Professor Gibbs privately