Scientists are naturally and necessarily conservative. So many
startling pseudo-scientific facts are announced, that every startling
scientific theory, before it is accepted, is submitted to the most
careful and crucial tests. No modern scientist will announce a
scientific fact as having been demonstrated until the demonstration is
complete and fortified with repeated tests of mathematical rigidity,
and as long as there remains a phenomenon that does not conform to the
supposed theory, acceptance and promulgation will be withheld. It is,
therefore, not surprising that the doctrine of Conservation of Energy
has been thoroughly intrenched as an established indisputable and
accepted fact of science, less than a single generation.
The student of natural science should be warned against the common
error of supposing that the discovery of a scientific fact or theory,
means demolition of the old theories. The rule is the other way. New
theories are additional information to the world, and usually conform
to, and are built upon what was known before. Conservation of Energy
was generalized from previously known facts conformed to them and
reflexively elucidated them, and left them standing clearer than before.
The proof that Conservation of Energy conforms to all other known
phenomena of nature has been aided, and hastened by the refinement
of scientific instruments by which forms of energy such as heat,
electricity, and magnetism can be more delicately measured and
determined than ever before, and if instruments for measuring and
determining the amount of energy in its various forms were as crude
as they were even a single century ago, it is probable Conservation
of Energy would still be the undiscovered foundation of all natural
phenomena.
Let us now consider a few well-known facts which it has been determined
positively by the most delicate instruments, prove and illustrate the
doctrine of Conservation of Energy.
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