Figure 6 - Michael Faraday (1791-1867) delivering the 1856
Christmas Lecture at the Royal Institution
Meanwhile, the analytical methods of rational mechanics began to be applied to experimental phenomena, most influentially with the French mathematician Joseph Fourier’s analytical treatment of the flow of heat, as published in 1822 [10, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_physics].
Text Thermodynamics, Statistical Mechanics, and Electromagnetic Theory
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The establishment of a mathematical physics of energy between the 1850s and the 1870s expanded substantially on the physics of prior eras and challenged traditional ideas about how the physical world worked. While Pierre-Simon Laplace’s work on celestial mechanics solidified a deterministically mechanistic view of objects obeying fundamental and totally reversible laws, the study of energy and particularly the flow of heat, threw this view of the universe into question.