ated by the Bernouillis,
Euler, Clairaut, d'Alembert, Taylor and Maclaurin, is finally completed
at the end of the century by Monge, Lagrange, and Laplace.[3102] In
astronomy, the series of calculations and observations which, from
Newton to Laplace, transforms science into a problem of mechanics,
explains and predicts the movements of the planets and of their
satellites, indicating the origin and formation of our solar system,
and, extending beyond this, through the discoveries of Herschel,
affording an insight into the distribution of the stellar archipelagos,
and of the grand outlines of celestial architecture. In physics, the
decomposition of light and the principles of optics discovered by
Newton, the velocity of sound, the form of its undulations, and
from Sauveur to Chladni, from Newton to Bernouilli and Lagrange, the
experimental laws and leading theorems of Acoustics, the primary laws of
the radiation of heat by Newton, Kraft and Lambert, the theory of latent
heat by Black, the proportions of caloric by Lavoisier and Laplace, the
first true conceptions of the source of fire and heat, the experiments,
laws, and means by which Dufay, Nollet, Franklin, and especially Coulomb
explain, manipulate and, for the first time, utilize electricity.--In
Chemistry, all the foundations of the science: isolated oxygen, nitrogen
and hydrogen, the composition of water, the theory of combustion,
chemical nomenclature, quantitative analysis, the indestructibility of
matter, in short, the discoveries of Scheele, Priestley, Cavendish
and Stahl, crowned with the clear and concise theory of Lavoisier.--In
Mineralogy, the goniometer, the constancy of angles and the primary laws
of derivation by Rome de Lisle, and next the discovery of types and
the mathematical deduction of secondary forms by Hauey.--In Geology,
the verification and results of Newton's theory, the exact form of the
earth, the depression of the poles, the expansion of the equator,[3103]
the cause and the law of the tides, the primitive fluidity of the
planet, the constancy of its internal heat, and then, with Buffon,
Desmarets, Hutton and Werner, the aqueous or igneous origin of rocks,
the stratifications of the earth, the structure of beds of fossils,
the prolonged and repeated submersion of continents, the slow growth
of animal and vegetable deposits, the vast antiquity of life, the
stripping, fracturing and gradual transformation of the terrestrial
surface,[3104] and,