(a) Identify the author of the passage (e.g. Coulomb)
(b) Comment briefly on the meaning of the passage.
You need to show that you understand what the passage is saying. Avoid the
temptation to simply tell us what else the author of the passage may have said on a
range of other topics. Stick to what is being said in the passage you have been
presented with. Do not quote or cite other material, and take care with your wording
of the answer, as your ability to focus on what matters will be judged important.
(c) Comment on the historical significance of the passage.
This is the trickiest part of the exercise. The task here is to say why the passage
matters by situating it in a wider historical context. For example, the passage might be
representative of a widely held view of the time, or it might signify an important
break with the past, or it might have been important for a subsequent generation of
thinkers, or it may reflect the influence of certain other ideas of the time at which it
was written, but which are not made explicit in the passage.
Passages :
a. The chief results of our theory are the differential equations of the movement of
heat in solid and liquid bodies…. The truth of these equations is not founded on
any physical explanation of the effects of heat. In whatever manner we please to
imagine the nature of this element, whether we regard it as a distinct material
thing which passes from one part of space to another, or whether we make heat
consist simply in the transfer of motion, we shall always arrive at the same
equations, since the hypothesis which we form must represent the general and
simple facts from which the mathematical laws are derived.
b. I have long held an opinion, almost amounting to a conviction, in common with
other lovers of natural knowledge, that the various forms under which the forces
of matter are made manifest have a common origin; or in other words, are directly
related and mutually dependent, that they are convertible, as it were, one into
another… This strong persuasion extended to the powers of light, and led, on a
former occasion, to many exertions, having for their object the discovery of the
direct relation of light and electricity… I recently resumed the inquiry by
experiment in a strict and searching manner and have at last succeeded… Thus is
established, I think for the first time, a true and direct relation and dependence
between light and magnetic and electric forces, and thus a great addition to the
facts and considerations which tend to prove that all natural forces are tied
together and have one common origin.
c. As a result it is clear that I in no way consider the magnetic and electric fluids as
one and the same thing, as do those who toil to derive the phenomena of both
electricity and magnetism, and many other things, from a single extremely subtle
fluid, namely the aether. It is my supposition that these fluids are endowed with
very different properties and are not compatible with a single underlying material;
of these the most significant is that electric bodies are attracted by all bodies
known to date, but on the contrary magnetic fluid is completely immune for the
action of all bodies known to date, save iron alone.
d. I conceive that when a magnet is in free space, there is such a medium (magnetically
speaking) around it… What that surrounding magnetic medium, deprived of all
material substance may be, I cannot tell, perhaps the aether. I incline to consider this
outer medium as essential to the magnet; that it is that which relates the external
polarities to each other by curved lines of power… To acknowledge the action in
curved lines seems to me to imply at once that the lines have a physical existence
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