Reply to a criticism of Prof. Olmsted, upon the arguments respecting the materiality of heat / adduced by Dr. Hare.

  • Hare, Robert, 1781-1858.
Date:
[1827?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Reply to a criticism of Prof. Olmsted, upon the arguments respecting the materiality of heat / adduced by Dr. Hare. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    the aggregate weight of both bodies.' He then proceeds to show- that the phenomena of temperature do not coincide with this law. Thus, when water or mercury of different temperatures is added together, the resulting temperature is not a mean, as it would be, were temperature merely the operation of a law of motion ; but the water is affected too little, and the mercury too much, to ad- mit of our referring the change to such a law. Little as I am dis- posed to adopt the views of Sir Humphrey Davy, I cannot but think that Dr. Hare has here suggested an answer which is not altogether unobjectionable. The application of his rule or test, makes it necessary to suppose, that the particles subjected to im- pact, are all moving in the same direction—that they all actually come into collision, each upon each, and that they are non elastic; none of which conditions are capable of being proved actually to exist, although it is only when they are all present, that the law of motion which he adduces holds true—however, if Dr. Hare be allowed to have fully and clearly refuted the hypothesis of Sir Humphrey, his argument is still imperfect, for it by no means es- tablishes the doctrine of the materiality of heat, to prove that Da- vy has failed of showing that it is a product of motion. Both par- ties, in my view, evince how idle it is to reason respecting chemi- cal phenomena upon mechanical principles. However idle it may be to advance mechanical princi- ples as the means of explaining the phenomena of Chemistry, I assert that, when mechanical, principles have been brought forward as the means of explanation, it is not idle to show the explanation thus founded inconsistent with its own pre- mises. Though I might have hesitated in applying to the reason- ings of so great a man as Sir H. Davy, the epithet employed by Prof. Olmsted, I challenge him to point out in my essay any word which tends to show, that I do not think it idle to employ mechanical principles in reasonings on Chemistry. We concur in disapproving of the hypothesis of Sir Hum- phrey Davy, but because I have met it with arguments upon its own basis, instead of briefly denouncing it, Prof. Olmsted accuses me, no less than the illustrious author, of polluting chemical science, with mechanical reasonings. If these reasonings be idle, let the great English Chemist, who introduced them, bear the weight of Prof. Olmsted's ani- madversion. Besides erroneously holding me up as the friend of a method of reasoning, of which I am really the an- tagonist, the criticisms of Prof. Olmsted would convey to any person, who had not read my essay, an impression that I had