But from the middle years of the century chemical science
progressed with ever-accelerating force, and the work of Bunsen,
Kirchhoff, Dalton, and Faraday has, in the last years of the
century, led up to the establishment of Mendeleef's law, by
which chemistry has become predictive, as astronomy had become
predictive by the calculations of Newton, and biology by the
discoveries of Darwin.
While one succession of strong men were thus developing
chemistry out of one form of magic, another succession were
developing physics out of another form.
First in this latter succession may be mentioned that line of
thinkers who divined and reasoned out great physical laws--a
line extending from Galileo and Kepler and Newton to Ohm and
Faraday and Joule and Helmholtz. These, by revealing more and
more clearly the reign of law, steadily undermined the older
theological view of arbitrary influence in nature. Next should
be mentioned the line of profound observers, from Galileo and
Torricelli to Kelvin.
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