JOULE OR MAYER?
Two years later Joule wished to read another paper,
but the chairman hinted that time was limited, and
asked him to confine himself to a brief verbal synopsis
of the results of his experiments. Had the chairman
but known it, he was curtailing a paper vastly more
important than all the other papers of the meeting put
together. However, the synopsis was given, and one
man was there to hear it who had the genius to appreciate
its importance. This was William Thomson, the
present Lord Kelvin, now known to all the world as
among the greatest of natural philosophers, but then
only a novitiate in science. He came to Joule's aid,
started rolling the ball of controversy, and subsequently
associated himself with the Manchester experimenter
in pursuing his investigations.
But meantime the acknowledged leaders of British
science viewed the new doctrine askance. Faraday,
Brewster, Herschel—those were the great names in
physics at that day, and no one of them could quite
accept the new views regarding energy. For several
years no older physicist, speaking with recognized
authority, came forward in support of the doctrine of
conservation. This culminating thought of the first
half of the nineteenth century came silently into the
world, unheralded and unopposed. The fifth decade
of the century had seen it elaborated and substantially
demonstrated in at least three different countries, yet
even the leaders of thought did not so much as know
of its existence. In 1853 Whewell, the historian of the
inductive sciences, published a second edition of his
history, and, as Huxley has pointed out, he did not so
much as refer to the revolutionizing thought which even
then was a full decade old.
By this time, however, the battle was brewing. The
rising generation saw the importance of a law which
their elders could not appreciate, and soon it was noised
abroad that there were more than one claimant to the
honor of discovery. Chiefly through the efforts of
Professor Tyndall, the work of Mayer became known
to the British public, and a most regrettable controversy
ensued between the partisans of Mayer and those
of Joule—a bitter controversy, in which Davy's contention
that science knows no country was not always
regarded, and which left its scars upon the hearts and
minds of the great men whose personal interests were
involved.
And so to this day the question who is the chief discoverer
of the law of the conservation of energy is not
susceptible of a categorical answer that would satisfy all
philosophers. It is generally held that the first choice
lies between Joule and Mayer. Professor Tyndall has
expressed the belief that in future each of these men
will be equally remembered in connection with this
work. But history gives us no warrant for such a hope.
Posterity in the long run demands always that its heroes
shall stand alone. Who remembers now that
Robert Hooke contested with Newton the discovery
of the doctrine of universal gravitation? The judgment
of posterity is unjust, but it is inexorable. And
so we can little doubt that a century from now one
name will be mentioned as that of the originator of the
great doctrine of the conservation of energy. The man
whose name is thus remembered will perhaps be spoken
of as the Galileo, the Newton, of the nineteenth century;
but whether the name thus dignified by the final
verdict of history will be that of Colding, Mohr, Mayer,
Helmholtz, or Joule, is not as, yet decided.
