Summary:
Making the assumption of the Newtonian natural philosophy and its laws, along with
their universal validity, one has to proceed to look into the logical consequences of
such an assumption. Laplace at the turn of the 18th century and the beginnings of
19th examined this question in a way which symbolised the perception of the world at
that time. According to this, the vast variety of the phenomena could be reduced to
an ensemble of some quantitative laws which determine the behavior of an essential
ontology, that of moving material particles. This mechanistic perspective along with
the ontology of "matter in motion" was prevailing during the nineteenth century in the
physical theories which were being proposed. At the same time there was an increasing
domination of the quantification of the natural phenomena. Furthermore energy, and the
principle of its conservation played a significant and unifying role, helping in shaping one
unified picture of the world.
But this picture, although dominant at that time, was not escaping the objections and
the problems which had been put forward both by theory and experiment. The dynamical
theory of the gases, and the equipartition theorem in particular, posed such a question
with intesity and as Kelvin put it "it was a cloud" over the dynamical theory as a whole.
Rayleigh was involved in this matter and investigated thoroughly the equipartition theorem.
Both Rayleigh and Ramsay proposed that Argon was a monoatomic gas on the grounds
of Clausius theorem, but this was a result of equipartition theorem as well, and as such
it was involved as a paradigm in the general discussion. Furthermore Rayleigh examined
the validity of this theorem concluding that if there is a problem that lays in the general
mechanics of which this theorem is a direct result. When he investigated the black body
radiation, he made again the assumption of equipartition theorem and the subsequent
law of Rayleigh-Jeans was in direct contradiction with the experimental facts. How Rayleigh
and his works was involved in this controversy is the object of this essay. But this
discussion has to be placed in its historical content and to be examined as a historical
event which took place in a certain place and time and interacted with a number of factors
and conditions, where the subjective ones or the social have not to be neglected
