Item 60 - James David Forbes to William Whewell

5 pp

Edinburgh - William Hopkin's paper in the Philosophical Magazine is hardly worth noticing: 'It is an abstract of his former memoirs in which some of the weaker parts are omitted; although the investigation of the Temp. of the interior of a glacier is really too absurd a misapplication of mathematical powers not to make those who see that it really proves absolutely nothing, feel a little hurt at an attempt to put symbols for arguments, and facts to boot, so evidently intended to overawe the uninitiated. His attempt too to shew that I have confounded flexibility with fluidity or plasticity is an unhandsome one , and I believe unfounded'. JDF goes on to show why it is unfounded. He would appreciate WW writing a few words to the Philosophical Magazine in answer to Hopkins's criticisms: 'Mr Airy who kindly made a very careful study of the mechanical part of my theory, rates him even lower than I do. It is not therefore from the worth of the arguments themselves that I think they want refutation, nor am I afraid of their gaining any general acceptance beyond what the array of symbols produces in the mind of the ignorant: but I am chary of my reputation at Cambridge...and I know the great, the too great weight with which Hopkins's opinion impresses the younger men'. A word in support from WW would really help him: 'The public, always swayed by names , would think better of me if sustained by you'. JDF has written a paper about the focal adjustment of the eye to distances: 'I shall shew that the correction of spherical by the variable density of the crystalline is a mere dream of optical writers' [On a Possible Explanation of the Adaption of the Eye to Distinct Vision at Different Distances, Trans. of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 1845].