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SCIENCE AND HYPOTHESIS.
is very particular, and as a matter of fact very crude, and we start with a perfectly general law, perfectly precise, the truth of which we regard as absolute. We have, so to speak, freely conferred this certainty on it by looking upon it as a convention.
Are the laws of acceleration and of the composition of forces only arbitrary conventions? Conventions, yes; arbitrary, no—they would be so if we lost sight of the experiments which led the founders of the science to adopt them, and which, imperfect as they were, were sufficient to justify their adoption. It is well from time to time to let our attention dwell on the experimental origin of these conventions.
