Treatise on Natural Philosophy
Treatise on Natural Philosophy was an 1867 text book by William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) and Peter Guthrie Tait, published by Oxford University Press. The Treatise was often referred to as and , as explained by Alexander Macfarlane: Maxwell had facetiously referred to Thomson as and Tait as . Hence the Treatise on Natural Philosophy came to be commonly referred to as and in conversation with mathematicians. Reception The first volume was received by an enthusiastic review in Saturday Review: The grand result of all concurrent research in modern times has been to confirm what was but perhaps a dream of genius, or an instinct of the keen Greek intellect, that all the operations of nature are rooted and grounded in number and figure. The Treatise was also reviewed as Elements of Natural Philosophy (1873). Thomson & Tait's Treatise on Natural Philosophy was reviewed by J. C. Maxwell in Nature of 3 July 1879 indicating the importance given to kinematics: "The guiding idea … is that geometry itself is part of the science of motion." In 1892 Karl Pearson noted that and perpetuated a "subjectivity of force" that originated with Newton. In 1902 Alexander Macfarlane ascribed much of the inspiration