But it is not alone those who pursue astronomy who ask for bread
and receive ideas. What more harmless than the attempt to lift and
distribute water by pumping it; what more absolutely and grossly
utilitarian? Yet out of pumps grew the discussions about Nature's
abhorrence of a vacuum; and then it was discovered that Nature does not
abhor a vacuum, but that air has weight; and that notion paved the way
for the doctrine that all matter has weight, and that the force which
produces weight is co-extensive with the universe,--in short, to the
theory of universal gravitation and endless force. While learning how
to handle gases led to the discovery of oxygen, and to modern chemistry,
and to the notion of the indestructibility of matter.
Again, what simpler, or more absolutely practical, than the attempt to
keep the axle of a wheel from heating when the wheel turns round very
fast? How useful for carters and gig drivers to know something about
this; and how good were it, if any ingenious person would find out the
cause of such phaenomena, and thence educe a general remedy for
them. Such an ingenious person was Count Rumford;[47] and he and
his successors have landed us in the theory of the persistence, or
indestructibility, of force. And in the infinitely minute, as in the
infinitely great, the seekers after natural knowledge of the kinds
called physical and chemical, have everywhere found a definite order and
succession of events which seem never to be infringed.
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