The further we penetrate into the knowledge of natural
phenomena, the clearer and the more developed becomes the bold
Cartesian conception regarding the mechanism of the universe. There is
nothing in the physical world but matter and movement."
If we adopt this conception, we are led to construct mechanical
representations of the material world, and to imagine movements in the
different parts of bodies capable of reproducing all the
manifestations of nature. The kinematic knowledge of these movements,
that is to say, the determination of the position, speed, and
acceleration at a given moment of all the parts of the system, or, on
the other hand, their dynamical study, enabling us to know what is the
action of these parts on each other, would then be sufficient to
enable us to foretell all that can occur in the domain of nature.
This was the great thought clearly expressed by the Encyclopaedists of
the eighteenth century; and if the necessity of interpreting the
phenomena of electricity or light led the physicists of last century
to imagine particular fluids which seemed to obey with some difficulty
the ordinary rules of mechanics, these physicists still continued to
retain their hope in the future, and to treat the idea of Descartes as
an ideal to be reached sooner or later.
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