We know nothing of the Universe as a whole, and every
generalization of this kind outruns in a singular fashion the limit of
experiment.
Even reduced to the most modest proportions, the principle of the
conservation of energy retains, nevertheless, a paramount importance;
and it still preserves, if you will, a high philosophical value. M.J.
Perrin justly points out that it gives us a form under which we are
experimentally able to grasp causality, and that it teaches us that a
result has to be purchased at the cost of a determined effort.
We can, in fact, with M. Perrin and M. Langevin, represent this in a
way which puts this characteristic in evidence by enunciating it as
follows: "If at the cost of a change C we can obtain a change K, there
will never be acquired at the same cost, whatever the mechanism
employed, first the change K and in addition some other change, unless
this latter be one that is otherwise known to cost nothing to produce
or to destroy." If, for instance, the fall of a weight can be
accompanied, without anything else being produced, by another
transformation--the melting of a certain mass of ice, for example--it
will be impossible, no matter how you set about it or whatever the
mechanism used, to associate this same transformation with the melting
of another weight of ice.
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