Note 21 — MODERN SCIENCE: A CRITICISM

As another instance of the same thing, let me quote a passage from Maxwell's Theory of Heat, p. 31; the italics are mine: "In our description of the physical properties of bodies as related to heat we have begun with solid bodies, as those which we can most easily handle, and have gone on to liquids, which we can keep in open vessels, and have now come to gases, which will escape from open vessels, and which are generally invisible. This is the order which is most natural in our first study of these different states. But as soon as we have been made familiar with the most prominent features of these different conditions of matter the most scientific course of study is in the reverse order, beginning with gases, on account of the greater simplicity of their laws, then advancing to liquids, the more complex laws of which are much more imperfectly known, and concluding with the little that has been hitherto discovered about the constitution of solid bodies." That is to say that Science finds it easier to work among gases—which are invisible and which we can know little about—than among solids, which we are familiar with and which we can easily handle! This seems a strange conclusion, but it will be found to represent a common procedure of Science—the truth probably being that the laws of gases are not one whit simpler than the laws of liquids and solids, but that on account of our knowing so much less about gases it is easier for us to feign laws in their case than in the case of solids, and less easy for our errors to be detected.