But then what gives us the right to attribute to the principle itself more generality and more precision than to the experiments which have served to demonstrate it? This is to ask whether it is legitimate, as is done every day, to generalize empirical data, and I shall not have the presumption to discuss this question, after so many philosophers have vainly striven to solve it. One thing is certain; if this power were denied us, science could not exist or, at least, reduced to a sort of inventory, to the ascertaining of isolated facts, it would have no value for us, since it could give no satisfaction to our craving for order and harmony and since it would be at the same time incapable of foreseeing.
As the circ.u.mstances which have preceded any fact will probably never be simultaneously reproduced, a first generalization is already necessary to foresee whether this fact will be reproduced again after the least of these circ.u.mstances shall be changed.
But every proposition may be generalized in an infinity of ways. Among all the generalizations possible, we must choose, and we can only choose the simplest. We are therefore led to act as if a simple law were, other things being equal, more probable than a complicated law.
Half a century ago this was frankly confessed, and it was proclaimed that nature loves simplicity; she has since too often given us the lie.
To-day we no longer confess this tendency, and we retain only so much of it as is indispensable if science is not to become impossible.
In formulating a general, simple and precise law on the basis of experiments relatively few and presenting certain divergences, we have therefore only obeyed a necessity from which the human mind can not free itself.
But there is something more, and this is why I dwell upon the point.
No one doubts that Mayer"s principle is destined to survive all the particular laws from which it was obtained, just as Newton"s law has survived Kepler"s laws, from which it sprang, and which are only approximative if account be taken of perturbations.
Why does this principle occupy thus a sort of privileged place among all the physical laws? There are many little reasons for it.
First of all it is believed that we could not reject it or even doubt its absolute rigor without admitting the possibility of perpetual motion; of course we are on our guard at such a prospect, and we think ourselves less rash in affirming Mayer"s principle than in denying it.
That is perhaps not wholly accurate; the impossibility of perpetual motion implies the conservation of energy only for reversible phenomena.
The imposing simplicity of Mayer"s principle likewise contributes to strengthen our faith. In a law deduced immediately from experiment, like Mariotte"s, this simplicity would rather seem to us a reason for distrust; but here this is no longer the case; we see elements, at first sight disparate, arrange themselves in an unexpected order and form a harmonious whole; and we refuse to believe that an unforeseen harmony may be a simple effect of chance. It seems that our conquest is the dearer to us the more effort it has cost us, or that we are the surer of having wrested her true secret from nature the more jealously she has hidden it from us.
But those are only little reasons; to establish Mayer"s law as an absolute principle, a more profound discussion is necessary. But if this be attempted, it is seen that this absolute principle is not even easy to state.
In each particular case it is clearly seen what energy is and at least a provisional definition of it can be given; but it is impossible to find a general definition for it.
If we try to enunciate the principle in all its generality and apply it to the universe, we see it vanish, so to speak, and nothing is left but this: _There is something which remains constant_.
But has even this any meaning? In the determinist hypothesis, the state of the universe is determined by an extremely great number _n_ of parameters which I shall call x_{1}, x_{2},... x_{_n_}. As soon as the values of these _n_ parameters at any instant are known, their derivatives with respect to the time are likewise known and consequently the values of these same parameters at a preceding or subsequent instant can be calculated. In other words, these _n_ parameters satisfy _n_ differential equations of the first order.
These equations admit of _n_ - 1 integrals and consequently there are _n_ - 1 functions of x_{1}, x_{2},... x_{_n_}, which remain constant.
_If then we say there is something which remains constant_, we only utter a tautology. We should even be puzzled to say which among all our integrals should retain the name of energy.
Besides, Mayer"s principle is not understood in this sense when it is applied to a limited system. It is then a.s.sumed that _p_ of our parameters vary independently, so that we only have _n_ - _p_ relations, generally linear, between our _n_ parameters and their derivatives.
To simplify the enunciation, suppose that the sum of the work of the external forces is null, as well as that of the quant.i.ties of heat given off to the outside. Then the signification of our principle will be:
_There is a combination of these n - p relations whose first member is an exact differential_; and then this differential vanishing in virtue of our _n_ - _p_ relations, its integral is a constant and this integral is called energy.
But how can it be possible that there are several parameters whose variations are independent? That can only happen under the influence of external forces (although we have supposed, for simplicity, that the algebraic sum of the effects of these forces is null). In fact, if the system were completely isolated from all external action, the values of our _n_ parameters at a given instant would suffice to determine the state of the system at any subsequent instant, provided always we retain the determinist hypothesis; we come back therefore to the same difficulty as above.
If the future state of the system is not entirely determined by its present state, this is because it depends besides upon the state of bodies external to the system. But then is it probable that there exist between the parameters _x_, which define the state of the system, equations independent of this state of the external bodies? and if in certain cases we believe we can find such, is this not solely in consequence of our ignorance and because the influence of these bodies is too slight for our experimenting to detect it?
If the system is not regarded as completely isolated, it is probable that the rigorously exact expression of its internal energy will depend on the state of the external bodies. Again, I have above supposed the sum of the external work was null, and if we try to free ourselves from this rather artificial restriction, the enunciation becomes still more difficult.
To formulate Mayer"s principle in an absolute sense, it is therefore necessary to extend it to the whole universe, and then we find ourselves face to face with the very difficulty we sought to avoid.
In conclusion, using ordinary language, the law of the conservation of energy can have only one signification, which is that there is a property common to all the possibilities; but on the determinist hypothesis there is only a single possibility, and then the law has no longer any meaning.
On the indeterminist hypothesis, on the contrary, it would have a meaning, even if it were taken in an absolute sense; it would appear as a limitation imposed upon freedom.
But this word reminds me that I am digressing and am on the point of leaving the domain of mathematics and physics. I check myself therefore and will stress of all this discussion only one impression, that Mayer"s law is a form flexible enough for us to put into it almost whatever we wish. By that I do not mean it corresponds to no objective reality, nor that it reduces itself to a mere tautology, since, in each particular case, and provided one does not try to push to the absolute, it has a perfectly clear meaning.
This flexibility is a reason for believing in its permanence, and as, on the other hand, it will disappear only to lose itself in a higher harmony, we may work with confidence, supporting ourselves upon it, certain beforehand that our labor will not be lost.
Almost everything I have just said applies to the principle of Clausius.
What distinguishes it is that it is expressed by an inequality. Perhaps it will be said it is the same with all physical laws, since their precision is always limited by errors of observation. But they at least claim to be first approximations, and it is hoped to replace them little by little by laws more and more precise. If, on the other hand, the principle of Clausius reduces to an inequality, this is not caused by the imperfection of our means of observation, but by the very nature of the question.
GENERAL CONCLUSIONS ON PART THIRD
The principles of mechanics, then, present themselves to us under two different aspects. On the one hand, they are truths founded on experiment and approximately verified so far as concerns almost isolated systems. On the other hand, they are postulates applicable to the totality of the universe and regarded as rigorously true.
If these postulates possess a generality and a certainty which are lacking to the experimental verities whence they are drawn, this is because they reduce in the last a.n.a.lysis to a mere convention which we have the right to make, because we are certain beforehand that no experiment can ever contradict it.
This convention, however, is not absolutely arbitrary; it does not spring from our caprice; we adopt it because certain experiments have shown us that it would be convenient.
Thus is explained how experiment could make the principles of mechanics, and yet why it can not overturn them.
Compare with geometry: The fundamental propositions of geometry, as for instance Euclid"s postulate, are nothing more than conventions, and it is just as unreasonable to inquire whether they are true or false as to ask whether the metric system is true or false.
Only, these conventions are convenient, and it is certain experiments which have taught us that.
At first blush, the a.n.a.logy is complete; the role of experiment seems the same. One will therefore be tempted to say: Either mechanics must be regarded as an experimental science, and then the same must hold for geometry; or else, on the contrary, geometry is a deductive science, and then one may say as much of mechanics.
Such a conclusion would be illegitimate. The experiments which have led us to adopt as more convenient the fundamental conventions of geometry bear on objects which have nothing in common with those geometry studies; they bear on the properties of solid bodies, on the rectilinear propagation of light. They are experiments of mechanics, experiments of optics; they can not in any way be regarded as experiments of geometry.
And even the princ.i.p.al reason why our geometry seems convenient to us is that the different parts of our body, our eye, our limbs, have the properties of solid bodies. On this account, our fundamental experiments are preeminently physiological experiments, which bear, not on s.p.a.ce which is the object the geometer must study, but on his body, that is to say, on the instrument he must use for this study.
On the contrary, the fundamental conventions of mechanics, and the experiments which prove to us that they are convenient, bear on exactly the same objects or on a.n.a.logous objects. The conventional and general principles are the natural and direct generalization of the experimental and particular principles.
Let it not be said that thus I trace artificial frontiers between the sciences; that if I separate by a barrier geometry properly so called from the study of solid bodies, I could just as well erect one between experimental mechanics and the conventional mechanics of the general principles. In fact, who does not see that in separating these two sciences I mutilate them both, and that what will remain of conventional mechanics when it shall be isolated will be only a very small thing and can in no way be compared to that superb body of doctrine called geometry?
One sees now why the teaching of mechanics should remain experimental.
Only thus can it make us comprehend the genesis of the science, and that is indispensable for the complete understanding of the science itself.
Besides, if we study mechanics, it is to apply it; and we can apply it only if it remains objective. Now, as we have seen, what the principles gain in generality and certainty they lose in objectivity. It is, therefore, above all with the objective side of the principles that we must be familiarized early, and that can be done only by going from the particular to the general, instead of the inverse.
The principles are conventions and disguised definitions. Yet they are drawn from experimental laws; these laws have, so to speak, been exalted into principles to which our mind attributes an absolute value.
Some philosophers have generalized too far; they believed the principles were the whole science and consequently that the whole science was conventional.
This paradoxical doctrine, called nominalism, will not bear examination.
How can a law become a principle? It expressed a relation between two real terms _A_ and _B_. But it was not rigorously true, it was only approximate. We introduce arbitrarily an intermediary term _C_ more or less fict.i.tious, and _C_ is _by definition_ that which has with _A_ _exactly_ the relation expressed by the law.
Then our law is separated into an absolute and rigorous principle which expresses the relation of _A_ to _C_ and an experimental law, approximate and subject to revision, which expresses the relation of _C_ to _B_. It is clear that, however far this part.i.tion is pushed, some laws will always be left remaining.
We go to enter now the domain of laws properly so called.