The main feature, therefore, of Experimental Physics at Cambridge is
the Devonshire Physical Laboratory, and I think it desirable that on
the present occasion, before we enter on the details of any special
study, we should consider by what means we, the University of
Cambridge, may, as a living body, appropriate and vitalise this new
organ, the outward shell of which we expect soon to rise before us.
The course of study at this University has always included Natural
Philosophy, as well as Pure Mathematics. To diffuse a sound knowledge
of Physics, and to imbue the minds of our students with correct
dynamical principles, have been long regarded as among our highest
functions, and very few of us can now place ourselves in the mental
condition in which even such philosophers as the great Descartes were
involved in the days before Newton had announced the true laws of the
motion of bodies. Indeed the cultivation and diffusion of sound
dynamical ideas has already effected a great change in the language
and thoughts even of those who make no pretensions to science, and we
are daily receiving fresh proofs that the popularisation of scientific
doctrines is producing as great an alteration in the mental state of
society as the material applications of science are effecting in its
outward life.
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