Scientific American Supplement, No. 470, January 3, 1885Various
Science
Scientific American Supplement, No. 470, January 3, 1885
Various
Science -- Periodicals
Dr. H.A. Mott recently delivered a lecture before the New York Academy of
Sciences, in Columbia College, on the Fallacy of the Present Theory of
Sound.
He commenced his lecture by stating that "the object of science was not to
find out what we like or what we dislike; the object of science was
truth." He then said that, as Galileo stated a hypothesis should be judged
by the weight of facts and the force of mathematical deductions, he
claimed the theory of sound should be so examined, and not allowed to
exist as a true theory simply because it is sustained by a long line of
scientific names; as too many theories had been overthrown to warrant the
acceptance of any one authority unless they had been thoroughly tested.
Dr. Mott stated that Dr. Wilford Hall was the first to attack the theory
of sound and show its fallaciousness, and that many other scientists
besides himself had agreed with Dr. Hall in his arguments and had advanced
additional arguments and experiments to establish this fact. Dr. Mott
first gave a very elaborate and still at the same time condensed statement
of the current theory of sound as propounded by such men as Helmholtz,
Tyndall, Lord Rayleigh, Mayer, Rood, Sir Wm. Thomson, and others, and
closed this section of the paper with the remarks made by Tyndall:
"Assuredly no question of science ever stood so much in need of revision
as this of the transmission of sound through the atmosphere. Slowly but
surely we mastered the question, and the further we advance, the more
plainly it appeared that our reputed knowledge regarding it was erroneous
from beginning to end."
Dr. Mott then took up the other side of the question, and treated the same
under the following heads:
1. Agitation of the air. 2. Mobility of the atmosphere. 3. Resonance. 4.
Heat and velocity of the supposed sound waves. 5. Decrease in loudness of
sound. 6. The physical strength of the locust. 7. The barometric theory of
Sir Wm. Thomson. 8. Elasticity and density of the air. 9. Interference and
beats. 10. The membrana tympani and the corti arches.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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