If we are asked, candidly, when is a fact _clear_ to us, we must say
"when we can reproduce it by very _simple_ and very familiar
intellectual operations, such as the construction of accelerations, or
the geometrical summation of accelerations, and so forth." The
requirement of _simplicity_ is of course to the expert a different
matter from what it is to the novice. For the first, description by a
system of differential equations is sufficient; for the second, a
gradual construction out of elementary laws is required. The first
discerns at once the connexion of the two expositions. Of course, it is
not disputed that the _artistic_ value of materially equivalent
descriptions may not be different.
Most difficult is it to persuade strangers that the grand universal laws
of physics, such as apply indiscriminately to material, electrical,
magnetic, and other systems, are not essentially different from
descriptions. As compared with many sciences, physics occupies in this
respect a position of vantage that is easily explained. Take, for
example, anatomy. As the anatomist in his quest for agreements and
differences in animals ascends to ever higher and higher
_classifications_, the individual facts that represent the ultimate
terms of the system, are still so different that they must be _singly_
noted. Think, for example, of the common marks of the Vertebrates, of
the class-characters of Mammals and Birds on the one hand and of Fishes
on the other, of the double circulation of the blood on the one hand and
of the single on the other. In the end, always _isolated_ facts remain,
which show only a _slight_ likeness to one another.
A science still more closely allied to physics, chemistry, is often in
the same strait. The abrupt change of the qualitative properties, in all
likelihood conditioned by the slight stability of the intermediate
states, the remote resemblance of the co-ordinated facts of chemistry
render the treatment of its data difficult. Pairs of bodies of different
qualitative properties unite in different mass-ratios; but no connexion
between the first and the last is to be noted, at first.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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