A History of Science, vol 3 | Page 3

this etext electronically, or by disk, book
or any other medium if you either delete this "Small Print!" and all
other references to Project Gutenberg, or:
[1] Only give exact copies of it. Among other things, this requires that
you do not remove, alter or modify the etext or this "small print!"
statement. You may however, if you wish, distribute this etext in
machine readable binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
including any form resulting from conversion by word pro- cessing or
hypertext software, but only so long as *EITHER*:
[*] The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and does *not*
contain characters other than those intended by the author of the work,
although tilde (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may be used
to convey punctuation intended by the author, and additional characters
may be used to indicate hypertext links; OR
[*] The etext may be readily converted by the reader at no expense into
plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent form by the program that displays
the etext (as is the case, for instance, with most word processors); OR
[*] You provide, or agree to also provide on request at no additional
cost, fee or expense, a copy of the etext in its original plain ASCII form
(or in EBCDIC or other equivalent proprietary form).
[2] Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this "Small
Print!" statement.
[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the net profits
you derive calculated using the method you already use to calculate
your applicable taxes. If you don't derive profits, no royalty is due.
Royalties are payable to "Project Gutenberg
Association/Carnegie-Mellon University" within the 60 days following
each date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare) your annual
(or equivalent periodic) tax return.

WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU
DON'T HAVE TO?
The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, scanning
machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty free copyright
licenses, and every other sort of contribution you can think of. Money
should be paid to "Project Gutenberg Association / Carnegie-Mellon
University".
*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN
ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*

A History of Science, Volume 3, by Henry Smith Williams
Scanned by Charles Keller with OmniPage Professional OCR software

A HISTORY OF SCIENCE BY HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS, M.D.,
LL.D. ASSISTED BY EDWARD H. WILLIAMS, M.D.
IN FIVE VOLUMES VOLUME III.
MODERN DEVELOPMENT OF THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES

CONTENTS
BOOK III


CHAPTER I
. THE SUCCESSORS OF NEWTON IN ASTRONOMY
The work of Johannes Hevelius--Halley and Hevelius--Halley's
observation of the transit of Mercury, and his method of determining
the parallax of the planets--Halley's observation of meteors--His
inability to explain these bodies--The important work of James
Bradley--Lacaille's measurement of the arc of the meridian--The
determination of the question as to the exact shape of the
earth--D'Alembert and his influence upon science- -Delambre's History
of Astronomy--The astronomical work of Euler.

CHAPTER II
. THE PROGRESS OF MODERN ASTRONOMY
The work of William Herschel--His discovery of Uranus--His
discovery that the stars are suns--His conception of the universe--His
deduction that gravitation has caused the grouping of the heavenly
bodies--The nebula, hypothesis, --Immanuel Kant's conception of the
formation of the world--Defects in Kant's conception--Laplace's final
solution of the problem--His explanation in detail--Change in the
mental attitude of the world since Bruno--Asteroids and
satellites--Discoveries of Olbers1--The mathematical calculations of
Adams and Leverrier--The discovery of the inner ring of Saturn--Clerk
Maxwell's paper on the stability of Saturn's rings--Helmholtz's
conception of the action of tidal friction--Professor G. H. Darwin's
estimate of the consequences of tidal action--Comets and
meteors--Bredichin's cometary theory--The final solution of the
structure of comets--Newcomb's estimate of the amount of cometary
dust swept up daily by the earth--The fixed stars--John Herschel's
studies of double stars--Fraunhofer's perfection of the refracting
telescope--Bessel's measurement of the parallax of a star,--Henderson's
measurements--Kirchhoff and Bunsen's perfection of the
spectroscope--Wonderful revelations of the spectroscope--Lord
Kelvin's estimate of the time that will be required for the earth to
become completely cooled-- Alvan Clark's discovery of the companion
star of Sirius-- The advent of the photographic film in astronomy--Dr.
Huggins's studies of nebulae--Sir Norman Lockyer's "cosmogonic
guess,"--Croll's pre-nebular theory.


CHAPTER III
. THE NEW SCIENCE OF PALEONTOLOGY
William Smith and fossil shells--His discovery that fossil rocks are
arranged in regular systems--Smith's inquiries taken up by Cuvier--His
Ossements Fossiles containing the first description of hairy

elephant--His contention that fossils represent extinct species only--Dr.
Buckland's studies of English fossil-beds--Charles Lyell combats
catastrophism, --Elaboration of his ideas with reference to the rotation
of species--The establishment of the doctrine of uniformitarianism,
--Darwin's Origin of Species--Fossil man--Dr. Falconer's visit to the
fossil-beds in the valley of the Somme--Investigations of Prestwich and
Sir John Evans--Discovery of the Neanderthal skull, --Cuvier's
rejection of human fossils--The finding of prehistoric carving on
ivory--The