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4. controversies
Pages 164-214

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From page 164...
... The question it aclclressecl haunted Thomson until the end of his life. In one of his dozen undergraduate publications, Thomson had shown that Fourier's theory of heat flow implied a fundamental difference between past and future.
From page 165...
... The sun produces considerable energy in forms other than direct heat (light, ultraviolet, radio waves, etc.) and heat received at the earth's surface is a poor measure of solar heat because a good deal is reflected.
From page 166...
... Not long after his first pronouncements on solar heat, Thomson became entangled with the Atlantic cable project and made no further progress for some years. He had satisfied himself that any conceivable chemical reactions would be too feeble to supply enough energy and that if the sun had been endowed at birth with some quantity of heat, which had been leaking passively away ever since, it would have cooled very rapidly early on and could not possibly maintain its current temperature even for centuries, let alone millennia or longer.
From page 167...
... At about the same time, during 1859 and 1860, Thomson got hold of data on heat loss from the earth, which allowed him to obtain numerical estimates of the planet's age from the methods he had proposed long ago. When the British Association met in Glasgow in 1855, Thomson had urged official endorsement of a program of measurements to establish the gradient of temperature with depth underground.
From page 168...
... His opening sentence plainly declared a broader and fiercer intent: "For eighteen years it has pressed on my mind, that essential principles of Thermo-dynamics have been overlooked by those geologists who uncompromisingly oppose all paroxysmal hypotheses, and maintain not only that we have examples now before us, on the earth, of all the different actions by which its crust has been modified in geological history, but that these actions have never, or have not on the whole, been more violent in the past than they are at present." Thomson began here with a characteristic revisionist flourish. "Eighteen years" refers to the 1844 publication of his first thoughts on heat loss from the earth.
From page 169...
... Thomson assumed that the earth had long ago been a uniform sphere, at the same temperature throughout, sitting in empty and absolutely cold space. As heat flowed away from the surface, a temperature gradient would develop in the interior, and simple application of Fourier's method yielded a formula for the surface temperature gradient as a function of elapsed time.
From page 170...
... Adding to Thomson's irritation was the incursion of biology into his subject, in the person of Charles Darwin, whose Origin' of Species appeared in 1859. Darwin did not much discuss the amount of time he thought the process of evolution required, but he recognized in a qualitative way that it was a slow business and leaned toward Lyell's view of an essentially infinite past.
From page 171...
... Thomson objected that the sun, being a finite body, could not possibly shine forever. Ramsay responded as if this point of physics had nothing to do with him: "I am as incapable of estimating and understanding the reasons which you physicists have for limiting geological time as you are incapable of understanding the geological reasons for our unlimited estimates." Thomson rejoined that "you can understand physicists' reasoning perfectly if you give your mind to it." It was another example of what he called aphasia, the habit of switching off one's mind as soon as mathematics was mentioned.
From page 172...
... He wrote mathematics and physics the same way. Seven years younger than William Thomson, he had enthusiastically embraced the new style of mathematical physics that was coming of age as he acquired an education.
From page 173...
... In February 1868 he tried again with a lecture, "On Geological Time," delivered to the Geological Society of Glasgow. He began bluntly: "A great reform in geological speculation seems now to have become necessary." Once again he talked of the cooling of the earth and of the impossibility of the sun shining forever.
From page 174...
... Huxley had earned the sobriquet "Darwin's Bulldog" for his tenacious debating on behalf of evolutionary theory, particularly in his contest with Bishop "Soapy Sam" Wilberforce at the 1860 British Association meeting in Oxford, when he famously declared that if he could choose his ancestors he would take an ape over the bishop. Huxley thought of himself as a generalist and an orator, but his first interest remained the biological sciences.
From page 175...
... Reading of Huxley's dismissal of the case, he responded in April at the Geological Society of Glasgow, lamenting once again that "so many geologists are contented to regard the general principles of natural philosophy, and their application to terrestrial physics, as matters quite foreign to their ordinary pursuits." He dredged up remarks from a number of recent geological writings to show that, in some quarters anyway, belief in the possible infiniteness of the past still existed. He had nothing new to say scientifically but bristled at Huxley's accusation of meddling: "I cannot pass from Professor Huxley's last sentence without asking, Who are the occupants of 'our house,' and who is the 'passer-by'?
From page 176...
... He had a nice answer: "As we have but too lately seen, when two Irish mobs are engaged in the sweet pastime of murdering one another, the interference of the police at once reconciles the hostile factions into one great brotherhood." From time to time Tait paused to inject a compliment toward Huxley as one of the foremost men of his discipline, but these pleasantries only served to introduce further insults and charges of scientific ignorance. Having laid waste to the foolish and insupportable beliefs of geologists and biologists, as opposed to the clear-eyed facts that Thomson had set before them, Tait closed his review of the subject by tightening the screws further: "In truth, when we come to examine the question as a whole, giving its full weight to each of the separate details, we find that we may, with considerable probability, say that Natural Philosophy already points to a period of some ten or Fleers millions of years as all that can be allowed for the purposes of the geologist and paleontologist; and that it is not unlikely that, with better experimental data, this period may be still farther reduced."
From page 177...
... That, perhaps, was a period of time the geologists could work with. This was not the first time Tait had taken up the cudgels on behalf of his excessively polite friend Thomson.
From page 178...
... The merit will belong to all those who have worked out the doctrine." A modest and unassuming man, Joule told Thomson: "I have not the slightest wish to detract from Mayer's real merits, and I hope I have said nothing which may be thought acrimonious or unfair." Mayer responded in turn to Joule, who refused to be drawn. As he explained to Thomson, his view was that while Mayer had undoubtedly proposed an equivalence between mechanical work and heat, he had offered no empirical evidence to back up the assertion.
From page 179...
... In 1853 he gave a successful popular lecture at the Royal Institution,
From page 180...
... In 1852, at the British Association meeting in Belfast, he made a favorable impression with an account of his recent work on the magnetic properties of certain crystals, but also publicly criticized William Thomson's theoretical opinions on the subject, and for good measure told the assembled scientists that the theory of solar prominences advanced by their countryman Charles Piazzi Smyth had been enunciated earlier by the German astronomer Feilitzsch. Thomson's ideas on magnetism were evolving during this period, and a few years later he had come around to an interpretation more in line with Faraday's thinking.
From page 181...
... Tyndall's closest friend described him as sometimes "peremptory, abrupt and dogmatic.... He enjoys an intellectual fence for its own sake, and I am not sure that his own dexterity in inflicting sharp lashes is not a source of amusement to him." In 1825, Faraday had begun a series of Friday evening public lectures at the Royal Institution, which served both to bring scientific innovation to a larger audience and to bring money to the struggling institution.
From page 182...
... He talked of a meteoric origin for the sun's heat, and how in 1854 "Professor William Thomson applied his admirable mathematical powers to the development of the theory; but six years previously the subject had been handled in a masterly manner by Mayer, and all that I have said on the subject has been derived from him." Tyndall's fiery sense of justice led him to a vigorous endorsement of Mayer: "Here was a man of genius working in silence, animated solely by a love of his subject, and arriving at the most important results some time in advance of those whose lives were entirely devoted to Natural Philosophy." No doubt Mayer's work had been neglected, and no doubt too
From page 183...
... This attempt to put Mayer ahead of Joule came to Thomson's attention during the summer of 1862, when Tait was visiting him on the Isle of Arran. In writing a rebuttal they were obliged to face an inconvenient fact: Mayer had indeed published a statement of the equivalence of heat and other forms of energy, along with a calculation of the mechanical equivalent of heat, in 1842, a year before Joule.
From page 184...
... As early as 1840 we find him investigating the heat generated by electric currents, and in 1841 he published researches which contain the germ of the vast developments of dynamical science as applied to chemical actions. In 1843 he published the results of a well planned and executed series of experiments, by which he ascertained that a pound of water is raised one degree Fahrenheit in temperature by 772 foot-pounds of mechanical work done upon it." This elaborate recitation is intended to make clear that, although Joule had not published his work until 1843, he had working up to it for a number of years before that.
From page 185...
... Mayer thus spoke of something being conserved without any precise sense of what that something was. His calculation of the mechanical equivalent of heat Thomson and Tait attacked vigorously.
From page 186...
... Tyndall translated Mayer's papers and arranged for their publication in the Philosophical Magazine, of which he had been an editor for some years now. Having earlier stated his admiration and respect for Joule, he now noted that Toule's initial determinations of the mechanical equivalent of heat "were so discordant that nobody attached any value to them" and that Helmholtz (Thomson's great friend a nice touch!
From page 187...
... Several other names came up: Seguin and Verdet, both French, and Colding, a Dane, had all made statements sounding like inarticulate versions of a law of conservation of energy before Mayer came into it. Tait, stretching his powers of interpretation to the limit, wanted Tyndall to admit that Isaac Newton himself had understood energy conservation, or rather would have, had he understood heat and light and electricity and magnetism better than he could have done at the timed Tait wrote with belligerence and bluster to cover up the holes in his logic.
From page 188...
... That such niceties remain debatable today illustrates the hopelessness of trying to apportion credit among the many scientists who contributed to the formulation of the laws of energy conservation and thermodynamics.
From page 189...
... Through these years Margaret Thomson remained an invalid, often housebound though accompanying her husband on summer trips to Arran or to Kreuznach, where the waters failed to cure her. Late in 1862 she suffered a fall that did her no physical harm but left her shocked and nervous.
From page 190...
... His immediate solution was work and travel. Although the Atlantic expedition of 1858 and the tussle with Whitehouse had demonstrated the virtues of his mirror galvanometer, Thomson had long sought to remedy its one flaw: It needed an operator to stand by at all times and record the flickering motion of
From page 191...
... The operators of the French Atlantic cable, which ran from Brest to St. Pierre, had been using siphon recorders with mixed success for about a year.
From page 192...
... He continued: "We loose in speed by it and the signals not being too distinct the speed is still further reduced by repititions being necessary.... I hope when Sir William Thomson's assistant Mr.
From page 193...
... The devices were made in Glasgow by his longtime instrument maker, lames White, who formed a company with Thomson as senior partner. Thomson asked for, and received, licensing fees of £1,000 a year from each company using the siphon recorder several times his professorial salary.
From page 194...
... At length Sir William went to the further side of the lecture table and copied into his note book the columns of figures on the blackboard. After a few hasty calculations he said: 'That will do, it is just what I expected.' Then off he hurried for a hasty lunch at Tait's before the start for London where during the next week he was to give expert evidence in a law case.
From page 195...
... During the summer he worked on his siphon recorder, in Cornwall and London, and bought the Lalla Rooth. He did not attend the inauguration of the new buildings, saying he was still officially in mourning.
From page 196...
... But Thomson had begun to settle into his spacious laboratory in the new Glasgow buildings, and the prospect not only of moving but of starting an entire new Cambridge course, in a laboratory yet to be built or equipped, did not attract him. He confessed to Cookson an anxiety about taking on new responsibilities, especially when set against "the great advantages I have here in the new College, the apparatus and assistance provided, the convenience for getting mechanical work done" (the latter referring to his long-standing relationship with the instrument maker lames White)
From page 197...
... He spent an inordinate amount of his time collecting and editing the scientific papers of Henry Cavendish, when more papers from lames Clerk Maxwell would have bestowed greater benefit on the world. In 1879, still producing works of enormous profundity and promise, Maxwell died of intestinal cancer, at the age of 48.
From page 198...
... Thomson was a bluff, engaging, straightforward fellow, but Maxwell was by nature an ironist and an observer. A watercolor by lemima shows Maxwell sitting silently to one side, looking away, while Hugh Blackburn and Thomson lark about with the youngsters.
From page 199...
... If he wished to read Ampere and Faraday &c how should they be arranged, and at what stage and in what order might he read your articles in the Cambridge Journal? " In the mid-1850s Thomson had published his innovative papers on electricity and magnetism, the main achievement of which had been to cast in mathematical form Faraday's qualitative ideas about lines of force and the state of "electrotonic" tension that Faraday believed to pervade electrified space.
From page 200...
... As with his earlier analogies between electric lines of forces and lines of heat flow according to Fourier, Thomson believed that mathematical similarity betokened an underlying physical connection, in the sense that different phenomena appeared to follow the same kinds of law. Such thinking bolstered his entire approach to electromagnetism.
From page 201...
... This was, after all, something new in physics. Maxwell's was the first modern field theory, rendering in precise mathematical form Faraday's extraordinary vision of electric and magnetic influences pervading space.
From page 202...
... Such peace is alone in the gift of god, and as it is he who gives it, why shall we be afraid? His unspeakable gift in his beloved son is the ground of no doubtful hope; and there is the rest for those who like you and me are drawing near the latter end of our terms here below." He died in 1867, never knowing of the way in which Maxwell had succeeded in casting his vision of the electromagnetic field into a mathematical form that other scientists would slowly accept.
From page 203...
... From the time of Newton and Galileo until the startling innovations of the early 20th century, modern theoretical physics emerged by evolution more than revolution. Around 1860, soon after they first met, Thomson and Tait conceived the idea of writing a textbook, in several volumes, in order to lay out the mathematical principles of "natural philosophy" that they both saw as the model for a finished science of the inanimate universe.
From page 204...
... Tait's difficulties with his coauthor became evident: "I will shortly send you the revised" headings, that you may see whether they correspond with your ideas, which I confess I have but vaguely gleaned from your notes." Thomson sent Tait bits and scraps and sketches, which
From page 205...
... Each year the book failed to materialize. Thomson published scientific papers and reviews at a great rate throughout his life, but his productivity came from working on so many projects at once that he could easily pick up another when he tired momentarily of one.
From page 206...
... Even the postman laughed when he delivered one of our missives, about the size of a postage stamp, out of a pocket handkerchief, in which he had tied it to make sure of not dropping it on the way." All this to-ing and fro-in" may not have appeared to Tait quite as much of a joke as it did to Thomson. At any rate, having existed in a sort of samizdat form for years, circulating among the undergraduates of Edinburgh and Glasgow as proof sections in various states of completion, the Treatise or' Natural Philosophy by Sir William Thomson and P
From page 207...
... You will see that from beginning to end they were never introduced." Thomson never approved of mathematical formalism for its own sake. Although Cayley disdained quaternions, he was still too rarefied a mathematician for Thomson's taste.
From page 208...
... Tait set himself to untangle this history, and he came to the new and remarkable conclusion that his friend Thomson had actually done all the hard work in 1852 and that Clausius's subsequent contributions were at best .
From page 209...
... In letters to Thomson in lanuary 1868, Tait castigated him for providing an inadequate proof of the fact that the sum of the heat transfers divided by temperature was zero around a reversible cycle. It "is no proof at all not even a chain of reasoning, merely a set of detached links!
From page 210...
... Tait responded by ignoring the main point and making some nitpicking remarks about Clausius's original definition of entropy. Under this provocation Clausius then embarked on his own book about thermodynamics, which predictably met with Tait's disapproval.
From page 211...
... But brilliance and imagination are not the same thing. In 1871 the British Association convened in Edinburgh for its annual meeting.
From page 212...
... He quoted with approval Darwin's famous sentence about the "grandeur in this view of life" as the result of selection acting upon and enlarging some original stock. But then he deliberately omitted Darwin's mention of the "origin of species by natural selection"
From page 213...
... In the end he finessed the difficult question of where creation ends and natural selection takes over. He noted that material from elsewhere rains constantly on to the earth in the form of meteors.
From page 214...
... He believed in the universal and encompassing power of scientific reasoning and felt no hesitation in applying the certain rules of mathematical physics in areas beyond the realms in which he had made his reputation. Mathematical physics, indeed, was his model for science in general.


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