The Science of Mechanics: A Critical and Historical Exposition of Its Principles

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Open court publishing Company, 1893 - 534 pages
 

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Page 193 - The qualities of bodies, which admit neither intensification nor remission of degrees, and which are found to belong to all bodies within the reach of our experiments, are to be esteemed the universal qualities of all bodies whatsoever.
Page 241 - Every body continues in its state of rest or of uniform motion in a straight line, except in so far as it is compelled by forces to change that state.
Page 222 - Absolute, true, and mathematical time, of itself, and from its own nature, flows equably without relation to anything external, and by another name is called duration: relative, apparent, and common time, is some sensible and external (whether accurate or unequable) measure of duration by the means of motion, which is commonly used instead of true time; such as an hour, a day, a month, a year.
Page 241 - Change of motion is proportional to the impressed force and takes place in the direction of the straight line in which the force acts.
Page 226 - Absolute space, in its own nature, without relation to anything external, remains always similar and immovable. Relative space is some movable dimension or measure of the absolute spaces; which our senses determine by its position to bodies; and which is commonly taken for immovable space...
Page 483 - In speaking of cause and effect we arbitrarily give relief to those elements to whose connection we have to attend in the reproduction of a fact in the respect in which it is important to us. There is no cause nor effect in nature; nature has but an individual existence; nature simply is.
Page 221 - The general drawn to the fact by experience, \^z\eperceivedin bod- this view, ies the existence of a special property determinative of accelerations, our task with regard to it ends with the recognition and unequivocal designation of this fact. Beyond the recognition of this fact we shall not get, and every venture beyond it will only be productive of obscurity. All uneasiness will vanish when once we have made clear to ourselves that in the concept of mass no theory of any kind whatever is contained,...
Page 485 - For it is precisely by the abstraction of uniformities that we know the question "why." . . . 4. In the details of science, its economical character is still more apparent. The so-called descriptive sciences must chiefly remain content with reconstructing individual facts. Where it is possible, the common features of many facts are once for all placed in relief. But in sciences that are more highly developed, rules for the reconstruction of great numbers of facts may be embodied in a single expression....
Page 232 - No one is competent to say how the experiment would turn out if the sides of the vessel increased in thickness and mass till they were ultimately several leagues thick. The one experiment only lies before us, and our business is, to bring it into accord with the other facts known to us, and not with the arbitrary fictions of our imagination.

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