Chapter II: Mechanical Physics

It cannot be denied that an unmistakable tendency has prevailed, from Democritus to the present day, to explain _all_ physical events _mechanically_. Not to mention earlier obscure expressions of that tendency we read in Huygens the following:[51]

"There can be no doubt that light consists of the _motion_ of a
certain substance. For if we examine its production, we find that
here on earth it is principally fire and flame which engender it,
both of which contain beyond doubt bodies which are in rapid
movement, since they dissolve and destroy many other bodies more
solid than they: while if we regard its effects, we see that when
light is accumulated, say by concave mirrors, it has the property
of combustion just as fire has, that is to say, it disunites the
parts of bodies, which is assuredly a proof of _motion_, at least
in the _true philosophy_, in which the causes of all natural
effects are conceived as _mechanical_ causes. Which in my judgment
must be accomplished or all hope of ever understanding physics
renounced."[52]

S. Carnot,[53] in introducing the principle of excluded perpetual motion into the theory of heat, makes the following apology:

"It will be objected here, perhaps, that a perpetual motion proved
impossible for _purely mechanical actions_, is perhaps not so when
the influence of _heat_ or of electricity is employed. But can
phenomena of heat or electricity be thought of as due to anything
else than to _certain motions of bodies_, and as such must they not
be subject to the general laws of mechanics?"[54]

These examples, which might be multiplied by quotations from recent literature indefinitely, show that a tendency to explain all things mechanically actually exists. This tendency is also intelligible. Mechanical events as simple motions in space and time best admit of observation and pursuit by the help of our highly organised senses. We reproduce mechanical processes almost without effort in our imagination. Pressure as a circumstance that produces motion is very familiar to us from daily experience. All changes which the individual personally produces in his environment, or humanity brings about by means of the arts in the world, are effected through the instrumentality of _motions_. Almost of necessity, therefore, motion appears to us as the most important physical factor. Moreover, mechanical properties may be discovered in all physical events. The sounding bell trembles, the heated body expands, the electrified body attracts other bodies. Why, therefore, should we not attempt to grasp all events under their mechanical aspect, since that is so easily apprehended and most accessible to observation and measurement? In fact, no objection _is_ to be made to the attempt to elucidate the properties of physical events by mechanical _analogies_.

But modern physics has proceeded _very far_ in this direction. The point of view which Wundt represents in his excellent treatise _On the Physical Axioms_ is probably shared by the majority of physicists. The axioms of physics which Wundt sets up are as follows:

1. All natural causes are motional causes.

2. Every motional cause lies outside the object moved.

3. All motional causes act in the direction of the straight line of junction, and so forth.

4. The effect of every cause persists.

5. Every effect involves an equal countereffect.

6. Every effect is equivalent to its cause.

These principles might be studied properly enough as fundamental principles of mechanics. But when they are set up as axioms of physics, their enunciation is simply tantamount to a negation of all events except motion.

According to Wundt, all changes of nature are mere changes of place. All causes are motional causes (page 26). Any discussion of the philosophical grounds on which Wundt supports his theory would lead us deep into the speculations of the Eleatics and the Herbartians. Change of place, Wundt holds, is the _only_ change of a thing in which a thing remains identical with itself. If a thing changed _qualitatively_, we should be obliged to imagine that something was annihilated and something else created in its place, which is not to be reconciled with our idea of the identity of the object observed and of the indestructibility of matter. But we have only to remember that the Eleatics encountered difficulties of exactly the same sort in motion. Can we not also imagine that a thing is destroyed in _one_ place and in _another_ an exactly similar thing created? After all, do we really know _more_ why a body leaves one place and appears in another, than why a _cold_ body grows _warm_? Granted that we had a perfect knowledge of the mechanical processes of nature, could we and should we, for that reason, _put out of the world_ all other processes that we do not understand? On this principle it would really be the simplest course to deny the existence of the whole world. This is the point at which the Eleatics ultimately arrived, and the school of Herbart stopped little short of the same goal.

Physics treated in this sense supplies us simply with a diagram of the world, in which we do not know reality again. It happens, in fact, to men who give themselves up to this view for many years, that the world of sense from which they start as a province of the greatest familiarity, suddenly becomes, in their eyes, the supreme "world-riddle."

Intelligible as it is, therefore, that the efforts of thinkers have always been bent upon the "reduction of all physical processes to the motions of atoms," it must yet be affirmed that this is a chimerical ideal. This ideal has often played an effective part in popular lectures, but in the workshop of the serious inquirer it has discharged scarcely the least function. What has really been achieved in mechanical physics is either the _elucidation_ of physical processes by more familiar _mechanical analogies_, (for example, the theories of light and of electricity,) or the exact _quantitative_ ascertainment of the connexion of mechanical processes with other physical processes, for example, the results of thermodynamics.