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 By the physical hypothesis, he meant the doctrine that the time of
a planet’s describing any part of its orbit is proportional to the
distance of the planet from the sun, for which supposition, as we
have said, he conceived that he had assigned physical reasons.

The two last hypotheses came the nearest to the truth, and
differed from it only by about eight minutes, the one in excess and
the other in defect. And, after being much perplexed by this
remaining error, it at last occurred to him 41 that he might take
another ellipsis, exactly intermediate between the former one and
the circle, and that this must give the path and the motion of the
planet. Making this assumption, and taking the areas to represent
the times, he now saw 42 that both the longitude and the distances of
Mars would agree with observation to the requisite degree of
accuracy. The rectification of the former hypothesis, when thus
stated, may, perhaps, appear obvious. And Kepler informs us that he
had nearly been anticipated in this step (c. 55). “David Fabricius, to
whom I had communicated my hypothesis of cap. 45, was able, by
his observations, to show that it erred in making the distances too
short at mean longitudes; of which he informed me by letter while I
was laboring, by repeated efforts, to discover the true hypothesis. So
nearly did he get the start of me in detecting the truth.” But this was
less easy than it might seem. When Kepler’s first hypothesis was
enveloped in the complex construction requisite in order to apply it to
each point of the orbit, it was far more difficult to see where the error
lay, and Kepler hit upon it only by noticing the coincidences of certain
numbers, which, as he says, raised him as if from sleep, and gave
him a new light. We may observe, also, that he was perplexed to
reconcile this new view, according to which the planet described an
exact ellipse, with his former opinion, which represented the motion
by means of libration in an epicycle. “This,” he says, “was my
greatest trouble, that, though I considered and reflected till I was
almost mad, I could not find why the planet to which, with so much
probability, and with such an exact 301 accordance of the distances,
libration in the diameter of the epicycle was attributed, should,
according to the indication of the equations, go in an elliptical path.
What an absurdity on my part! as if libration in the diameter might not
be a way to the ellipse!”
41 De Stellâ Martis, c. 58.

42 Ibid. p. 235.

Another scruple respecting this theory arose from the impossibility

of solving, by any geometrical construction, the problem to which
Kepler was thus led, namely, “To divide the area of a semicircle in a
given ratio, by a line drawn from any point of the diameter.” This is
still termed “Kepler’s Problem,” and is, in fact, incapable of exact
geometrical solution. As, however, the calculation can be performed,
and, indeed, was performed by Kepler himself, with a sufficient
degree of accuracy to show that the elliptical hypothesis is true, the
insolubility of this problem is a mere mathematical difficulty in the
deductive process, to which Kepler’s induction gave rise.

Of Kepler’s physical reasonings we shall speak more at length on

another occasion. His numerous and fanciful hypotheses had
discharged their office, when they had suggested to him his many
lines of laborious calculation, and encouraged him under the
exertions and disappointments to which these led. The result of this
work was the formal laws of the motion of Mars, established by a
clear induction, since they represented, with sufficient accuracy, the
best observations. And we may allow that Kepler was entitled to the
praise which he claims in the motto on his first leaf. Ramus had said
that if any one would construct an astronomy without hypothesis, he
would be ready to resign to him his professorship in the University of
Paris. Kepler quotes this passage, and adds, “it is well, Ramus, that
you have run from this pledge, by quitting life and your
professorship; 43 if you held it still, I should, with justice, claim it.” This
was not saying too much, since he had entirely overturned the
hypothesis of eccentrics and epicycles, and had obtained a theory
which was a mere representation of the motions and distances as
they were observed.
43 Ramus perished in the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. 302
 CHAPTER V.

Sequel to the epoch of Kepler. Reception, Verification, and Extension of

the Elliptical Theory.

Sect. 1.—Application of the Elliptical Theory to the Planets.

T HE extension of Kepler’s discoveries concerning the orbit of

Mars to the other planets, obviously offered itself as a strong
probability, and was confirmed by trial. This was made in the first
place upon the orbit of Mercury; which planet, in consequence of the
largeness of its eccentricity, exhibits more clearly than the others the
circumstances of the elliptical motion. These and various other
supplementary portions of the views to which Kepler’s discoveries
had led, appeared in the latter part of his Epitome Astronomiæ
Copernicanæ, published in 1622.

The real verification of the new doctrine concerning the orbits and
motions of the heavenly bodies was, of course, to be found in the
construction of tables of those motions, and in the continued
comparison of such tables with observation. Kepler’s discoveries had
been founded, as we have seen, principally on Tycho’s observations.
Longomontanus (so called as being a native of Langberg in
Denmark), published in 1621, in his Astronomia Danica, tables
founded upon the theories as well as the observations of his
countryman. Kepler 44 in 1627 published his tables of the planets,
which he called Rudolphine Tables, the result and application of his
own theory. In 1633, Lansberg, a Belgian, published also Tabulæ
Perpetuæ, a work which was ushered into the world with
considerable pomp and pretension, and in which the author cavils
very keenly at Kepler and Brahe. We may judge of the impression
made upon the astronomical world in general by these rival works,
from the account which our countryman Jeremy Horrox has given of
their effect on him. He had been seduced by the magnificent
promises of Lansberg, and the praises of his admirers, which are
prefixed to the work, and was persuaded that the common opinion
which preferred Tycho and Kepler to him was a prejudice. In 1636,
however, he became acquainted with Crabtree, another young 303
astronomer, who lived in the same part of Lancashire. By him Horrox
was warned that Lansberg was not to be depended on; that his
hypotheses were vicious, and his observations falsified or forced into
agreement with his theories. He then read the works and adopted
the opinions of Kepler; and after some hesitation which he felt at the
thought of attacking the object of his former idolatry, he wrote a
dissertation on the points of difference between them. It appears
that, at one time, he intended to offer himself as the umpire who was
to adjudge the prize of excellence among the three rival theories of
Longomontanus, Kepler, and Lansberg; and, in allusion to the story
of ancient mythology, his work was to have been called Paris
Astronomicus; we easily see that he would have given the golden
apple to the Keplerian goddess. Succeeding observations confirmed
his judgment: and the Rudolphine Tables, thus published seventy-six
years after the Prutenic, which were founded on the doctrines of
Copernicus, were for a long time those universally used.
 44 Rheticus, Narratio, p. 98.

Sect. 2.—Application of the Elliptical Theory to the Moon.

The reduction of the Moon’s motions to rule was a harder task

than the formation of planetary tables, if accuracy was required; for
the Moon’s motion is affected by an incredible number of different
and complex inequalities, which, till their law is detected, appear to
defy all theory. Still, however, progress was made in this work. The
most important advances were due to Tycho Brahe. In addition to the
first and second inequalities of the moon (the Equation of the Centre,
known very early, and the Evection, which Ptolemy had discovered),
Tycho proved that there was another inequality, which he termed the
Variation, 45 which depended on the moon’s position with respect to
the sun, and which at its maximum was forty minutes and a half,
about a quarter of the evection. He also perceived, though not very
distinctly, the necessity of another correction of the moon’s place
depending on the sun’s longitude, which has since been termed the
Annual Equation.
45 We have seen (chap. iii.), that Aboul-Wefa, in the tenth
century, had already noticed this inequality; but his discovery had
been entirely forgotten long before the time of Tycho, and has
only recently been brought again into notice.

These steps concerned the Longitude of the Moon; Tycho also

made important advances in the knowledge of the Latitude. The
Inclination of the Orbit had hitherto been assumed to be the same at
all 304 times; and the motion of the Node had been supposed
uniform. He found that the inclination increased and diminished by
twenty minutes, according to the position of the line of nodes; and
that the nodes, though they regress upon the whole, sometimes go
forwards and sometimes go backwards.

Tycho’s discoveries concerning the moon are given in his

Progymnasmata, which was published in 1603, two years after the
author’s death. He represents the Moon’s motion in longitude by
means of certain combinations of epicycles and eccentrics. But after
Kepler had shown that such devices are to be banished from the
planetary system, it was impossible not to think of extending the
elliptical theory to the moon. Horrox succeeded in doing this; and in
1638 sent this essay to his friend Crabtree. It was published in 1673,
with the numerical elements requisite for its application added by
Flamsteed. Flamsteed had also (in 1671–2) compared this theory
with observation, and found that it agreed far more nearly than the
Philolaic Tables of Bullialdus, or the Carolinian Tables of Street
(Epilogus ad Tabulas). Moreover Horrox, by making the centre of the
ellipse revolve in an epicycle, gave an explanation of the evection,
as well as of the equation of the centre. 46
46 Horrox (Horrockes as he himself spelt his name) gave a first
sketch of his theory in letters to his friend Crabtree in 1638: in
which the variation of the eccentricity is not alluded to. But in
Crabtree’s letter to Gascoigne in 1642, he gives Horrox’s rule
concerning it; and Flamsteed in his Epilogue to the Tables,
published by Wallis along with Horrox’s works in 1673, gave an
explanation of the theory which made it amount very nearly to a
revolution of the centre of the ellipse in an epicycle. Halley
afterwards made a slight alteration; but hardly, I think, enough to
justify Newton’s assertion (Princip. Lib. iii. Prop. 35, Schol.),
“Halleius centrum ellipseos in epicyclo locavit.” See Baily’s
Flamsteed, p. 683.
 Modern astronomers, by calculating the effects of the perturbing
forces of the solar system, and comparing their calculations with
observation, have added many new corrections or equations to
those known at the time of Horrox; and since the Motions of the
heavenly bodies were even then affected by these variations as yet
undetected, it is clear that the Tables of that time must have shown
some errors when compared with observation. These errors much
perplexed astronomers, and naturally gave rise to the question
whether the motions of the heavenly bodies really were exactly
regular, or whether they were not affected by accidents as little
reducible to rule as wind and weather. Kepler had held the opinion of
the casualty of such errors; but Horrox, far more philosophically,
argues against this opinion, though he 305 allows that he is much
embarrassed by the deviations. His arguments show a singularly
clear and strong apprehension of the features of the case, and their
real import. He says, 47 “these errors of the tables are alternately in
excess and defect; how could this constant compensation happen if
they were casual? Moreover, the alternation from excess to defect is
most rapid in the Moon, most slow in Jupiter and Saturn, in which
planets the error continues sometimes for years. If the errors were
casual, why should they not last as long in the Moon as in Saturn?
But if we suppose the tables to be right in the mean motions, but
wrong in the equations, these facts are just what must happen; since
Saturn’s inequalities are of long period, while those of the Moon are
numerous, and rapidly changing.” It would be impossible, at the
present moment, to reason better on this subject; and the doctrine,
that all the apparent irregularities of the celestial motions are really
regular, was one of great consequence to establish at this period of
the science.
47 Astron. Kepler. Proleg. p. 17.
 Sect. 3.—Causes of the further Progress of Astronomy.

We are now arrived at the time when theory and observation

sprang forwards with emulous energy. The physical theories of
Kepler, and the reasonings of other defenders of the Copernican
theory, led inevitably, after some vagueness and perplexity, to a
sound science of Mechanics; and this science in time gave a new
face to Astronomy. But in the mean time, while mechanical
mathematicians were generalizing from the astronomy already
established, astronomers were accumulating new facts, which
pointed the way to new theories and new generalizations.
Copernicus, while he had established the permanent length of the
year, had confirmed the motion of the sun’s apogee, and had shown
that the eccentricity of the earth’s orbit, and the obliquity of the
ecliptic, were gradually, though slowly, diminishing. Tycho had
accumulated a store of excellent observations. These, as well as the
laws of the motions of the moon and planets already explained, were
materials on which the Mechanics of the Universe was afterwards to
employ its most matured powers. In the mean time, the telescope
had opened other new subjects of notice and speculation; not only
confirming the Copernican doctrine by the phases of Venus, and the
analogical examples of Jupiter and Saturn, which with their Satellites
306 appeared like models of the Solar System; but disclosing
unexpected objects, as the Ring of Saturn, and the Spots of the Sun.
The art of observing made rapid advances, both by the use of the
telescope, and by the sounder notions of the construction of
instruments which Tycho introduced. Copernicus had laughed at
Rheticus, when he was disturbed about single minutes; and declared
that if he could be sure to ten minutes of space, he should be as
much delighted as Pythagoras was when he discovered the property
of the right-angled triangle. But Kepler founded the revolution which
he introduced on a quantity less than this. “Since,” he says, 48 “the
Divine Goodness has given us in Tycho an observer so exact that
this error of eight minutes is impossible, we must be thankful to God
for this, and turn it to account. And these eight minutes, which we
must not neglect, will, of themselves, enable us to reconstruct the
whole of astronomy.” In addition to other improvements, the art of
numerical calculation made an inestimable advance by means of
Napier’s invention of Logarithms; and the progress of other parts of
pure mathematics was proportional to the calls which astronomy and
physics made upon them.
48 De Stellâ Martis, c. 19.

The exactness which observation had attained enabled

astronomers both to verify and improve the existing theories, and to
study the yet unsystematized facts. The science was, therefore,
forced along by a strong impulse on all sides, and its career
assumed a new character. Up to this point, the history of European
Astronomy was only the sequel of the history of Greek Astronomy;
for the heliocentric system, as we have seen, had had a place
among the guesses, at least, of the inventive and acute intellects of
the Greek philosophers. But the discovery of Kepler’s Laws,
accompanied, as from the first they were, with a conviction that the
relations thus brought to light were the effects and exponents of
physical causes, led rapidly and irresistibly to the Mechanical
Science of the skies, and collaterally, to the Mechanical Science of
the other parts of Nature: Sound, and Light, and Heat; and
Magnetism, and Electricity, and Chemistry. The history of these
Sciences, thus treated, forms the sequel of the present work, and will
be the subject of the succeeding volumes. And since, as I have said,
our main object in this work is to deduce, from the history of science,
the philosophy of scientific discovery, it may be regarded as
fortunate for our purpose that the history, after this point, so far
changes its aspect as to offer new materials for such speculations.
The details of 307 a history of astronomy, such as the history of
astronomy since Newton has been, though interesting to the special
lovers of that science, would be too technical, and the features of the
narrative too monotonous and unimpressive, to interest the general
reader, or to suggest a comprehensive philosophy of science. But
when we pass from the Ideas of Space and Time to the Ideas of
Force and Matter, of Mediums by which action and sensation are
produced, and of the Intimate Constitution of material bodies, we
have new fields of inquiry opened to us. And when we find that in
these fields, as well as in astronomy, there are large and striking
trains of unquestioned discovery to be narrated, we may gird
ourselves afresh to the task of writing, and I hope, of reading, the
remaining part of the History of the Inductive Sciences, in the trust
that it will in some measure help us to answer the important
questions, What is Truth? and, How is it to be discovered?
 BOOK VI.

THE MECHANICAL SCIENCES.

H I S T O R Y O F M E C H A N I C S,
INCLUDING

FLUID MECHANICS.
ΚΡΑΤΟΣ ΒIΑ ΤΕ, σφῷν μὲν ἐντολὴ Διὸς
Ἔχει Τέλος δὴ, κ’ οὐδὲν ἐμποδῶν ἔτι
Æschylus. Prom. Vinct. 13.

You, FORCE and POWER, have done your destined task:

And naught impedes the work of other hands.
 INTRODUCTION.

W EfromenterAstronomy
now upon a new region of the human mind. In passing
to Mechanics we make a transition from the
formal to the physical sciences;—from time and space to force and
matter;—from phenomena to causes. Hitherto we have been
concerned only with the paths and orbits, the periods and cycles, the
angles and distances, of the objects to which our sciences applied,
namely, the heavenly bodies. How these motions are produced;—by
what agencies, impulses, powers, they are determined to be what
they are;—of what nature are the objects themselves;—are
speculations which we have hitherto not dwelt upon. The history of
such speculations now comes before us; but, in the first place, we
must consider the history of speculations concerning motion in
general, terrestrial as well as celestial. We must first attend to
Mechanics, and afterwards return to Physical Astronomy.

In the same way in which the development of Pure Mathematics,

which began with the Greeks, was a necessary condition of the
progress of Formal Astronomy, the creation of the science of
Mechanics now became necessary to the formation and progress of
Physical Astronomy. Geometry and Mechanics were studied for their
own sakes; but they also supplied ideas, language, and reasoning to
other sciences. If the Greeks had not cultivated Conic Sections,
Kepler could not have superseded Ptolemy; if the Greeks had
cultivated Dynamics, 1 Kepler might have anticipated Newton.
1Dynamics is the science which treats of the Motions of Bodies;
Statics is the science which treats of the Pressure of Bodies which
are in equilibrium, and therefore at rest. 312
 CHAPTER I.

Prelude to the Epoch of Galileo.

Sect. 1.—Prelude to the Science of Statics.

S OME steps in the science of Motion, or rather in the science of

Equilibrium, had been made by the ancients, as we have seen.
Archimedes established satisfactorily the doctrine of the Lever, some
important properties of the Centre of Gravity, and the fundamental
proposition of Hydrostatics. But this beginning led to no permanent
progress. Whether the distinction between the principles of the
doctrine of Equilibrium and of Motion was clearly seen by
Archimedes, we do not know; but it never was caught hold of by any
of the other writers of antiquity, or by those of the Stationary Period.
What was still worse, the point which Archimedes had won was not
steadily maintained.

We have given some examples of the general ignorance of the

Greek philosophers on such subjects, in noticing the strange manner
in which Aristotle refers to mathematical properties, in order to
account for the equilibrium of a lever, and the attitude of a man rising
from a chair. And we have seen, in speaking of the indistinct ideas of
the Stationary Period, that the attempts which were made to extend
the statical doctrine of Archimedes, failed, in such a manner as to
show that his followers had not clearly apprehended the idea on
which his reasoning altogether depended. The clouds which he had,
for a moment, cloven in his advance, closed after him, and the
former dimness and confusion settled again on the land.
 This dimness and confusion, with respect to all subjects of
mechanical reasoning, prevailed still, at the period we now have to
consider; namely, the period of the first promulgation of the
Copernican opinions. This is so important a point that I must
illustrate it further.

Certain general notions of the connection of cause and effect in

motion, exist in the human mind at all periods of its development,
and are implied in the formation of language and in the most familiar
employments of men’s thoughts. But these do not constitute a
science of 313 Mechanics, any more than the notions of square and
round make a Geometry, or the notions of months and years make
an Astronomy. The unfolding these Notions into distinct Ideas, on
which can be founded principles and reasonings, is further requisite,
in order to produce a science; and, with respect to the doctrines of
Motion, this was long in coming to pass; men’s thoughts remained
long entangled in their primitive and unscientific confusion.

We may mention one or two features of this confusion, such as we

find in authors belonging to the period now under review.

We have already, in speaking of the Greek School Philosophy,

noticed the attempt to explain some of the differences among
Motions, by classifying them into Natural Motions and Violent
Motions; and we have spoken of the assertion that heavy bodies fall
quicker in proportion to their greater weight. These doctrines were
still retained: yet the views which they implied were essentially
erroneous and unsound; for they did not refer distinctly to a
measurable Force as the cause of all motion or change of motion;
and they confounded the causes which produce and those which
preserve, motion. Hence such principles did not lead immediately to
any advance of knowledge, though efforts were made to apply them,
in the cases both of terrestrial Mechanics and of the motions of the
heavenly bodies.

The effect of the Inclined Plane was one of the first, as it was one
of the most important, propositions, on which modern writers
employed themselves. It was found that a body, when supported on
a sloping surface, might be sustained or raised by a force or exertion
which would not have been able to sustain or raise it without such
support. And hence, The Inclined Plane was placed in the list of
Mechanical Powers, or simple machines by which the efficacy of
forces is increased: the question was, in what proportion this
increase of efficiency takes place. It is easily seen that the force
requisite to sustain a body is smaller, as the slope on which it rests is
smaller; Cardan (whose work, De Proportionibus Numerorum,
Motuum, Ponderum, &c., was published in 1545) asserts that the
force is double when the angle of inclination is double, and so on for
other proportions; this is probably a guess, and is an erroneous one.
Guido Ubaldi, of Marchmont, published at Pesaro, in 1577, a work
which he called Mechanicorum Liber, in which he endeavors to
prove that an acute wedge will produce a greater mechanical effect
than an obtuse one, without determining in what proportion. There is,
he observes, “a certain repugnance” between the direction in which
the side of the wedge tends to 314 move the obstacle, and the
direction in which it really does move. Thus the Wedge and the
Inclined Plane are connected in principle. He also refers the Screw
to the Inclined Plane and the Wedge, in a manner which shows a
just apprehension of the question. Benedetti (1585) treats the
Wedge in a different manner; not exact, but still showing some
powers of thought on mechanical subjects. Michael Varro, whose
Tractatus de Motu was published at Geneva in 1584, deduces the
wedge from the composition of hypothetical motions, in a way which
may appear to some persons an anticipation of the doctrine of the
Composition of Forces.

There is another work on subjects of this kind, of which several

editions were published in the sixteenth century, and which treats
this matter in nearly the same way as Varro, and in favour of which a
claim has been made 2 (I think an unfounded one), as if it contained
the true principle of this problem. The work is “Jordanus Nemorarius
De Ponderositate.” The date and history of this author were probably
even then unknown; for in 1599, Benedetti, correcting some of the
errors of Tartalea, says they are taken “a Jordano quodam antiquo.”
The book was probably a kind of school-book, and much used; for
an edition printed at Frankfort, in 1533, is stated to be Cum gratia et
privilegio Imperiali, Petro Apiano mathematico Ingolstadiano ad xxx
annos concesso. But this edition does not contain the Inclined Plane.
Though those who compiled the work assert in words something like
the inverse proportion of Weights and their Velocities, they had not
learnt at that time how to apply this maxim to the Inclined Plane; nor
were they ever able to render a sound reason for it. In the edition of
Venice, 1565, however, such an application is attempted. The
reasonings are founded on the Aristotelian assumption, “that bodies
descend more quickly in proportion as they are heavier.” To this
principle are added some others; as, that “a body is heavier in
proportion as it descends more directly to the centre,” and that, in
proportion as a body descends more obliquely, the intercepted part
of the direct descent is smaller. By means of these principles, the
“descending force” of bodies, on inclined planes, was compared, by
a process, which, so far as it forms a line of proof at all, is a
somewhat curious example of confused and vicious reasoning.
When two bodies are supported on two inclined planes, and are