Physics, on the other hand, reveals to us wide domains of _qualitatively
homogeneous_ facts, differing from one another only in the number of
equal parts into which their characteristic marks are divisible, that
is, differing only _quantitatively_. Even where we have to deal with
qualities (colors and sounds), quantitative characters of those
qualities are at our disposal. Here the classification is so simple a
task that it rarely impresses us as such, whilst in infinitely fine
gradations, in a _continuum of facts_, our number-system is ready
beforehand to follow as far as we wish. The co-ordinated facts are here
extremely similar and very closely affined, as are also their
descriptions which consist in the determination of the numerical
measures of one given set of characters from those of a different set by
means of familiar mathematical operations--methods of derivation. Thus,
the common characteristics of all descriptions can be found here; and
with them a succinct, comprehensive description, or a rule for the
construction of all single descriptions, is assigned,--and this we call
_law_. Well-known examples are the formulæ for freely falling bodies,
for projectiles, for central motion, and so forth. If physics apparently
accomplishes more by its methods than other sciences, we must remember
that in a sense it has presented to it much simpler problems.
The remaining sciences, whose facts also present a physical side, need
not be envious of physics for this superiority; for all its acquisitions
ultimately redound to their benefit as well. But also in other ways this
mutual help shall and must change. Chemistry has advanced very far in
making the methods of physics her own. Apart from older attempts, the
periodical series of Lothar Meyer and Mendelejeff are a brilliant and
adequate means of producing an easily surveyed system of facts, which by
gradually becoming complete, will take the place almost of a continuum
of facts. Further, by the study of solutions, of dissociation, in fact
generally of phenomena which present a continuum of cases, the methods
of thermodynamics have found entrance into chemistry. Similarly we may
hope that, at some future day, a mathematician, letting the
fact-continuum of embryology play before his mind, which the
palæontologists of the future will supposedly have enriched with more
intermediate and derivative forms between Saurian and Bird than the
isolated Pterodactyl, Archæopteryx, Ichthyornis, and so forth, which we
now have--that such a mathematician shall transform, by the variation of
a few parameters, as in a dissolving view, one form into another, just
as we transform one conic section into another.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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