Little Masterpieces of Science: Invention and Discovery
History
Little Masterpieces of Science: Invention and Discovery
Inventions
Permutations of two elements, 1 and 2, are (1 x 2) two; 1, 2; 2, 1; or
_a_, _b_; _b_, _a_. Of three elements the permutations are (1 x 2 x 3)
six; 1, 2, 3; 1, 3, 2; 2, 1, 3; 2, 3, 1; 3, 1, 2; 3, 2, 1; or _a_, _b_,
_c_; _a_, _c_, _b_; _b_, _a_, _c_; _b_, _c_, _a_; _c_, _a_, _b_; _c_,
_b_, _a_. Of four elements the permutations are (1 x 2 x 3 x 4)
twenty-four; of five elements, one hundred and twenty, and so on. A new
element or permutator multiplies by an increasing figure all the
permutations it finds.
[6] Some years ago I sent an outline of this argument to Herbert
Spencer, who replied: "I recognize a novelty and value in your inference
that the law implies an increasing width of gap between lower and higher
types as evolution advances."
COUNT RUMFORD IDENTIFIES HEAT WITH MOTION.
[Benjamin Thompson, who received the title of Count Rumford from
the Elector of Bavaria, was born in Woburn, Massachusetts, in 1753.
When thirty-one years of age he settled in Munich, where he devoted
his remarkable abilities to the public service. Twelve years
afterward he removed to England; in 1800 he founded the Royal
Institution of London, since famous as the theatre of the labours
of Davy, Faraday, Tyndall, and Dewar. He bequeathed to Harvard
University a fund to endow a professorship of the application of
science to the art of living: he instituted a prize to be awarded
by the American Academy of Sciences for the most important
discoveries and improvements relating to heat and light. In 1804 he
married the widow of the illustrious chemist Lavoisier: he died in
1814. Count Rumford on January 25, 1798, read a paper before the
Royal Society entitled "An Enquiry Concerning the Source of Heat
Which Is Excited by Friction." The experiments therein detailed
proved that heat is identical with motion, as against the notion
that heat is matter. He thus laid the corner-stone of the modern
theory that heat light, electricity, magnetism, chemical action,
and all other forms of energy are in essence motion, are
convertible into one another, and as motion are indestructible. The
following abstract of Count Rumford's paper is taken from "Heat as
a Mode of Motion," by Professor John Tyndall, published by D.
Appleton & Co., New York. This work and "The Correlation and
Conservation of Forces," edited by Dr. E. L. Youmans, published by
the same house, will serve as a capital introduction to the modern
theory that energy is motion which, however varied in its forms, is
changeless in its quantity.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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