Watson's Kinetic Theory of Gases

Abstract

THE rather pointed reference to myself, which Dr. Watson makes at the end of this new edition of his work, seems to call for an answer. Had this call come some five or six years ago, when the questions once again at issue were debated in a somewhat lively way, I should have had little difficulty in rising to it:—but I have in the interval been so busy with questions of a totally different nature that I am taken at a disadvantage, especially as I cannot at present find time to read up again the discussions of that period. I remember enough about them, however, to make the very positive assertion that the questions then raised turned on points of logic, relevancy, and consistency, much more than upon physical ideas or mathematical processes; and a perusal of Dr. Watson's volume shows me that he has reproduced from Boltzmann and others much of what I then objected to. I believe that I gave, in 1886 (Trans. R S.E. vol. xxxiii.), the first (and possibly even now the sole) thoroughly legitimate, and at least approximately complete, demonstration of what is known as Clerk-Maxwell's Theorem, relating to the ultimate partition of energy between or among two or more sets of hard, smooth, and perfectly elastic spherical particles. And I then pointed out, in considerable detail, the logical deficiencies or contradictions which vitiated Maxwell's own proof of 1859, as well as those involved in the mode of demonstration which he subsequently adopted from Boltzmann. Dr. Boltzmann entered, at the time, on an elaborate defence of his position; but he did not, in my opinion, satisfactorily dispose of the objections I had raised. Of course I am fully aware how very much easier it is for one to discover flaws in another man's logic than in his own, and how unprepared he usually is to acknowledge his own defects of logic even when they are pointed out to him. But the only attacks which, so far as I know, have been made on my investigation, were easily shown to be due to misconception of some of the terms or processes employed. A Treatise on the Kinetic Theory of Gases. By Henry William Watson Second Edition. (Oxford: at the Clarendon Press, 1893.)