I have not in every case been able to avoid the use of the abbreviated and precise terminology of mathematics. To do so would have been to sacrifice matter to form; for the language of everyday life has not yet grown to be sufficiently accurate for the purposes of so exact a science as mechanics.
Regard for the true endeavor of philosophy, that of guiding into one common stream the many rills of knowledge, will not be found wanting in my work, although it takes a determined stand against the encroachments of metaphysical methods.
That branch of physics which is at once the oldest and the simplest and which is therefore as introductory to other departments of this science, is concerned with the motions and equilibrium masses. It bears the name of mechanics.
The history of the development of mechanics, is... indispensable to a full comprehension of the science in its present condition. It also affords a simple and instructive example of the processes by which natural science generally is developed.
An instinctive, irreflective knowledge of the processes of nature will doubtless always precede the scientific, conscious apprehension, or investigation, of phenomena. The former is the outcome of the relation in which the processes of nature stand to the satisfaction of our wants.
The acquisition of the most elementary truth does not devolve upon the individual alone: it is pre-effected in the development of the race.
[I]t is necessary to make a distinction between mechanical experience and mechanical science... If we carefully examine the ancient Egyptian and Assyrian monuments, we shall find there pictorial representations of many kinds of implements and mechanical contrivances... long before theory was dreamed of, implements, machines, mechanical experiences, and mechanical knowledge were abundant.
It is utterly beyond our power to measure the changes of things by time. Quite the contrary, time is an abstraction, at which we arrive by means of the changes of things...
[W]ithin the short span of a human life and with man's limited powers of memory, any stock of knowledge worthy of the name is unattainable except by the greatest mental economy. Science itself, therefore, may be regarded as a minimal problem, consisting of the completest possible presentment of facts with the least possible expenditure of thought.
The function of science... is to replace experience. Thus, on the one hand, science must remain in the province of experience, but, on the other, must hasten beyond it, constantly expecting confirmation, constantly expecting the reverse. Where neither confirmation nor refutation is possible, science is not concerned. Science acts and only acts in the domain of uncompleted experience.
Every unbiased mind must admit that the age in which the chief development of the science of mechanics took place, was an age of predominantly theological cast. Theological questions were excited by everything, and modified everything. No wonder, then, that mechanics is colored thereby.
Similarly, the notions of the constancy of the quantity of matter, of the constancy of the quantity of motion, of the indestructibility of work or energy, conceptions which completely dominate modern physics, all arose under the influence of theological ideas.
During the entire sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, down to the close of the eighteenth, the prevailing inclination of inquirers was, to find in all physical laws some particular disposition of the Creator.
Newton never, despite his profound religiosity, mingled theology with the questions of science. … The same may be said of Galileo and Huygens.
In fact, science can accomplish nothing by the consideration of .
But now, after a century has elapsed, after our judgment has grown more sober, the world-conception of the encyclopaedists appears to us as a of the old religions.
Physical science does not pretend to be a of an incomplete conception of the world and the preference for it rather than an apparently perfect, but inadequate conception.