Royal Institution, April 27, 1863.
I trust you will permit me to make a few remarks in connexion with the brief review of my Lectures on Heat which appeared in your last number.1 It is quite possible that my mode of treating the subject may be open to even graver criticism2 than that which your reviewer has bestowed upon it; but I should be extremely sorry if an alleged personal defect on my part should stand between the readers of the Athenaeum and a generalization which they ought to be among the earliest to understand and appreciate. The dynamical theory of heat, forming as it does the most important part of the theory of the interaction of natural forces, is deemed by the most competent authorities of this age fit to stand, in point of importance, beside the Newtonian theory of gravitation. It is held, without misgiving, by the leading natural philosophers of all the countries of Europe. Had the theory still to be discussed, I should never have presumed to bring it before the public as I have done. But proofs of it of the most varied and conclusive character have been accumulating for the last twenty years, until they have at last disarmed all opposition. This theory must not only be the future guide of the practical engineer in his applications of heat as a motive power, but in its more purely intellectual bearings the theory must profoundly affect the whole course of philosophic thought and inquiry. It, moreover, opens up views of vital phenomena, and of the organization of the material universe, which cannot be regarded with indifference by any thinking man; and it is for these reasons that I have endeavoured, as far as in me lay, to divest the subject, without injuring it, of technical difficulties, and thus to render it accessible to the intellectual public of England.
The passage3 which your reviewer has done me the honour to quote is the most highly coloured in the book. It reads, indeed, more like romance than science; and nothing is more natural than that it should stagger those who have not closely followed the developments of modern physics. It may be, and probably is, open to the charge of unnecessary iteration, but certainly no coolness or calmness on my part could add to the substantial truth of the statements therein contained. When, for example, I say that “every fire that burns and every lamp that glows dispenses light, and heat which originally belonged to the sun,” I mean to express a fact, and not a figure of speech. There heat of every fire in London is as much a part of the sun’s heat as if every glowing coal had been taken by tongs from the body of the sun and put into our grates; and the sun’s heat has been diminished by the exact quantity emitted by our fires. This seems very wonderful, but it is only a small part of the wonders which the dynamical theory of heat lays open to our view. The lifting of a weight from the earth is a commonplace act; but it is an act of the same mechanical quality as that performed by the sun which he lifts the oxygen from the carbon of carbonic acid gas, and permits the latter to store itself in the holes, branches, and leaves of our trees. It is the solar force thus invested in the vegetables, that afterwards becomes the source of all animal power. Muscular force is simply that sun’s force transmuted. The helmsman stands at the wheel, but he cannot add one jot, or tittle to the motion of the ship. He directs, but cannot create. Equally ineffectual is human volition, or the organic processes of the animal body, to generate one unit of mechanical force. All such force is primarily derived from the sun. These are the latest verities of science, and, read in their light, the passage quoted by your reviewer will not appear extravagant. I may add, that these considerations are confined to the twelfth lecture of the course, and that the work embraces the relationship of the dynamical theory to all the phenomena of heat. It is, moreover, so written that the reader who wishes it may also make himself acquainted with the old theory. Indeed, the old theory comes out with greater vividness by its contrast with the new one.
John Tyndall
J. Tyndall, ‘Heat as a Mode of Motion’, Athenaeum, 2 May 1863, p. 585.
which appeared in your last number: the anonymous review of Heat as a Mode of Motion was published in the Athenaeum, 25 April 1863, p. 549. All reviews in the Athenaeum were published without authorial attribution.
even graver criticism: the reviewer had criticized Tyndall’s work for displaying ‘in many portions of these lectures too much of the spirit of an advocate, and sometimes there is evidence of special pleading which is unbecoming the philosopher… Readers of the book will not expect to find the calmness of Herschel or Faraday; for Prof. Tyndall has his own individualities as a writer and thinker, which lend to his work their character and charm’ (see n. 3 for reference).
The passage: in the lengthy quoted passage, taken from Lecture XII, Tyndall asserted, in quite poetic language, that all energy finds its source in the sun (p. 549).
Please cite as “Tyndall2004,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on