Time would fail me if I were to attempt to illustrate by examples the
scientific value of the classification of quantities. I shall only
mention the name of that important class of magnitudes having
direction in space which Hamilton has called vectors, and which form
the subject-matter of the Calculus of Quaternions, a branch of
mathematics which, when it shall have been thoroughly understood by
men of the illustrative type, and clothed by them with physical
imagery, will become, perhaps under some new name, a most powerful
method of communicating truly scientific knowledge to persons
apparently devoid of the calculating spirit.
The mutual action and reaction between the different departments of
human thought is so interesting to the student of scientific progress,
that, at the risk of still further encroaching on the valuable time of
the Section, I shall say a few words on a branch of physics which not
very long ago would have been considered rather a branch of
metaphysics. I mean the atomic theory, or, as it is now called, the
molecular theory of the constitution of bodies.
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