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JOHN DALTON

predecessors—Newton. Dalton encountered certain phenomena, such as multiple and definite proportion, aqueous vapor as a distinct constituent of air, and, seeking for the simplest common representation, found it in Newton's well-known doctrine. For example, he says:

According to this view of the subject [heat], every atom has an atmosphere of heat around it, in the same manner as the earth or any other planet has its atmosphere of air surrounding it, which can not certainly be said to be held by chemical affinity, but by a species of attraction of a very different kind.[1]

And he quotes from Newton:

All bodies seem to be composed of hard particles. . . . Even the rays of light seem to be hard bodies, and how such very hard particles which are only laid together and touch only in a few points, can stick together, and that so firmly as they do, without the assistance of something which causes them to be attracted or pressed towards one another, is very difficult to conceive.[2]

This was the secret of the opposition of Hope and, later, of Faraday's complaint. In a letter, dated January 2, 1811, Hope wrote to Dalton as follows:

I need not conceal from you that I am by no means a convert to your doctrine, and do not approve of putting the result of speculative reasoning as experiment.

While Faraday, similarly suspicious, as late as 1844, said:

The word atom, which can never be used without involving much that is purely hypothetical, is often intended to be used to express a simple fact. . . . There can be no doubt that the words definite proportions, equivalents, primes, etc., . . . did not express the hypothesis as well as the fact.[3]

The truth is that Dalton was a first-rate theorist, who arrived at his conclusions, not primarily on the basis of induction from experiment, but by reflection. Analogically, he imports the view of "matter n peculiar to celestial mechanics, through molecular physics, into the realm of chemistry. Proceeding thus deductively, he evinces little awareness of the very complex problems involved, which the later developments of the atomic theory were to reveal. Cut off from the world, he did not possess intimate acquaintance in detail with the labors of his immediate predecessors and contemporaries—a happy accident, no doubt. For, this freedom from puzzle and disturbance enabled him to proceed boldly with a generalization when men of the caliber of Wollaston and Davy hung back. Dalton had natural capacity for logical thought, and complete confidence in the validity of those mathematical syntheses of physical facts which he had pondered.

But, as happens frequently, his limitations are traceable to the same source. Like Kant before him, Dalton became so entangled in the theoretical ways of his own thought that, after he had promulgated his

  1. ↑ Manchester Memoirs, Vol. II. (2d series), pp. 287 f.
  2. ↑ Royal Institution Lecture Notes.
  3. ↑ "Experimental Researches," Vol. II., pp. 285 f.
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