Page:Scientific Papers of Josiah Willard Gibbs.djvu/30

xxii at equations somewhat different from those of Maxwell in that they do not contain explicitly the dielectric constant and conductivity as measured electrically, thus avoiding certain difficulties (especially in regard to metallic reflection) which the theory as originally stated had encountered; and it is made clear that "a point of view more in accordance with what we know of the molecular constitution of bodies will give that part of the ordinary theory which is verified by experiment, without including that part which is in opposition to observed facts." Some experiments of Professor C. S. Hastings in 1888 (which showed that the double refraction in Iceland spar conformed to Huygens's law to a degree of precision far exceeding that of any previous verification) again led Professor Gibbs to take up the subject of optical theories in a paper which shows, in a remarkably simple manner, from elementary considerations, that this result and also the general character of the facts of dispersion are in strict accord with the electrical theory, whil no one of the elastic theories which had, at that time, been proposed could be reconciled with these experimental results. A few months later upon the publication of Sir William Thomson's theory of an infinitely compressible ether, it became necessary to supplement the comparison by taking account of this theory also. It is not subject to the insuperable difficulties which beset the other elastic theories, since its equations and surface conditions for perfectly homogeneous and transparent media are identical in form with those of the electrical theory, and lead in an equally direct manner to Fresnel's construction for doubly-refracting mdia, and to the proper values for the intensities of the reflected and refracted light. But Gibbs shows that, in the case of a fine-grained medium, Thomson's theory does not lead to the known facts of dispersion without unnatural and forced hypotheses, and that in the case of metallic reflection it is subject to similar difficulties; while, on the other hand, "it may be said for the electrical theory that it is not obliged to invent hypotheses, but only to apply the laws furnished by the science of electricity, and that it is difficult to account for the coincidences between the electrical and optical properties of media unless we regard the motions of light as electrical."

Of all the arguments (from theoretical grounds alone) for excluding all other theories of light except the electrical, these papers furnish the simplest, most philosophical, and most conclusive with which the present wirter is acquainted; and it seems likely that the considerations advanced in them would have sufficed to firmly establish this theory even if the experimental discoveries of Hertz had not supplied a more direct proof of its validity.

In his last work, Elementary Principles in Statistical Mechanics,