Popular Lectures and Addresses: Geology and general physicsMacmillan and Company, 1894 - 654 pages |
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amount approximately Arctic Arctic Ocean astronomical atmosphere atoms axis balance-wheel beats body British Association calculated Carnot centimetres century chemical chronometer clock cooling Croll crust Daniel Bernoulli depth dynamical earth earth's rotation electric engine equal estimate experiments feet force friction geological geologists give Glasgow globe gravitation Horatius Cocles hypothesis ice-cap influence investigation isoperimetrical problem Joule Joule's kilometres laboratory land liquid magnetic storms marine chronometer mass mathematical matter mechanical effect melting meteoric metres miles million moment of inertia moon moon's motion Natural Philosophy North nutation observations observatories orbit pendulum period phenomena physical plutonic Pole potential energy practical precession present principles probable produced Professor Huxley quantity radiation rate of augmentation regarding result rock Royal Society scientific solar solid spheroid supposed surface telegraph terrestrial magnetism theory thickness Thomson tidal tides tion underground temperature uniformitarianism University variations velocity vibration whole
Popular passages
Page 538 - That gravity should be innate, inherent and essential to matter, so that one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum, without the mediation of any thing else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity, that I believe no man who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking, can ever fall into it.
Page 156 - Accurate and minute measurement seems to the nonscientific imagination, a less lofty and dignified work than looking for something new. But nearly all the grandest discoveries of science have been but the rewards of accurate measurement and patient long-continued labour in the minute sifting of numerical results.
Page 83 - It seems, therefore, on the whole most probable that the sun has not illuminated the earth for 100,000,000 years, and almost certain that he has not done so for 500,000,000 years. As for the future, we may say, with equal certainty, that inhabitants of the earth cannot continue to enjoy the light and heat essential to their life, for many million years longer, unless sources now unknown to us are prepared in the great storehouse of creation.
Page 200 - ... ripe beauty, by a fiat of Creative Power ? or did vegetation, growing up from seed sown, spread and multiply over the whole Earth...
Page 102 - Mathematics may be compared to a mill of exquisite workmanship, which grinds you stuff of any degree of fineness ; but, nevertheless, what you get out depends on what you put in ; and as the grandest mill in the world will not extract wheat-flour from peascods, so pages of formulae will not get a definite result out of loose data.
Page 203 - There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.
Page 204 - Laputan method of making books, and that it did not sufficiently take into account a continually guiding and controlling intelligence. This seems to me a most valuable and instructive criticism. I feel profoundly convinced that the argument of design has been greatly too much lost sight of in recent zoological speculations. Reaction against the frivolities of teleology, such as are to be found, not rarely, in the notes of the learned commentators on Paley's
Page 462 - It is impossible by means of inanimate material agency to derive mechanical effect from any portion of matter by cooling it below the temperature of the coldest of the surrounding objects.
Page 517 - A sudden outburst of light, far exceeding the brightness of the sun's surface, was seen to take place, and sweep like a drifting cloud over a portion of the solar face. This was attended with magnetic disturbances of unusual intensity, and with exhibitions of aurora of extraordinary brilliancy. The identical instant at which the effusion of light was observed was recorded by an abrupt and strongly-marked deflection in the self-registering instruments at Kew.
