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Updated: June 25, 2025
If I mention the names of Sigwart, Mach, Ostwald, Pearson, Milhaud, Poincare, Duhem, Ruyssen, those of you who are students will easily identify the tendency I speak of, and will think of additional names. Riding now on the front of this wave of scientific logic Messrs. Schiller and Dewey appear with their pragmatistic account of what truth everywhere signifies.
M. Duhem has approached the problem from another side, and endeavours to bring it within the range of thermodynamics. Yet ordinary thermodynamics could not account for experimentally realizable states of equilibrium in the phenomena of viscosity and friction, since this science declares them to be impossible.
M. Duhem, however, arrives at the idea that the establishment of the equations of thermodynamics presupposes, among other hypotheses, one which is entirely arbitrary, namely: that when the state of the system is given, external actions capable of maintaining it in that state are determined without ambiguity, by equations termed conditions of equilibrium of the system.
Among these recent contributions to science I will quote the articles of Duhem on the Evolution of Mechanics published in 1903 in the Revue générale des Sciences, and other articles by the same author, in 1904, in the Revue de Philosophie. Duhem's views have attracted much attention, and have dealt a serious blow at the whole theory of the mechanics of matter.
Corporal Duhem and Sergeant Rabot and Zébédé came to have a talk with me. We were together in 1813, and they had been at my wedding, and in spite of the difference in our rank they had always continued their friendship for me. "Well! Joseph," said Zébédé, "the dance is going to commence."
It was but lately that one Gaston advanced with a stick in full assembly to thresh Legendre; and Cambon and Duhem are sometimes obliged to be holden by the arms and legs, to prevent their falling on Tallien and Freron.
Common sense is BETTER for one sphere of life, science for another, philosophic criticism for a third; but whether either be TRUER absolutely, Heaven only knows. Just now, if I understand the matter rightly, we are witnessing a curious reversion to the common-sense way of looking at physical nature, in the philosophy of science favored by such men as Mach, Ostwald and Duhem.
If we reject this hypothesis, it will then be allowable to introduce into thermodynamics laws previously excluded, and it will be possible to construct, as M. Duhem has done, a much more comprehensive theory. The ideas of M. Duhem have been illustrated by remarkable experimental work.
As early as 1886, M. Duhem showed that the theory of the thermodynamic potential furnished precise information on solutions or liquid mixtures. He thus discovered over again the famous law on the lowering of the congelation temperature of solvents which had just been established by M. Raoult after a long series of now classic researches.
The students of a more advanced age are still to be disposed of, and the task of devising an institution will not be easy; because, perhaps a Collot d'Herbois or a Duhem is not satisfied with the system which perfectioned the genius of Montesquieu or Descartes.
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