The Correlation and Conservation of Forces: A Series of Expositions, by Prof. Grove, Prof. Helmholtz, Dr. Mayer, Dr. Faraday, Prof. Liebig and Dr. Carpenter. With an Introduction and Brief Biographical Notices of the Chief Promoters of the New Views

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D. Appleton, 1870 - 438 pages
 

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Page 368 - 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 anything 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 179 - In verbis etiam tenuis cautusque serendis, Dixeris egregie notum si callida verbum Reddiderit junctura novum. Si forte necesse est Indiciis monstrare recentibus abdita rerum, Fingere cinctutis non exaudita Cethegis Continget, dabiturque licentia sumpta pudenter ; Et nova fictaque nuper habebunt verba fidem si Graeco fonte cadant, parce detorta.
Page 99 - What I call Attraction may be perform'd by impulse, or by some other means unknown to me. I use that Word here to signify only in general any Force by which Bodies tend towards one another, whatsoever be the Cause.
Page 80 - Yet nature is made better by no mean, But nature makes that mean: so, o'er that art, Which you say adds to nature, is an art That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry A gentler scion to the wildest stock, And make conceive a bark of baser kind By bud of nobler race: this is an art Which does mend nature, — change it rather; but The art itself is nature.
Page xxiii - It is hardly necessary to add that anything which any insulated body, or system of bodies, can continue to furnish without limitation cannot possibly be a material substance: and it appears to me to be extremely difficult, if not quite impossible, to form any distinct idea of anything, capable...
Page 329 - If we compare with this result the working of our best steam-engines, we see how small a part only of the heat applied under the boiler is really transformed into motion or the raising of weights; and this may serve as justification for the attempts at the profitable...
Page 231 - ... planet, we should find that it would require several cubic miles of such matter to weigh a single grain. The general attractive force of all matter must, however, impel these masses to approach each other, and to condense, so that the nebulous sphere became incessantly smaller...
Page 137 - Are not gross Bodies and Light convertible into one another, and may not bodies receive much of their Activity from the Particles of Light which enter their Composition?
Page xxii - ACTUALLY BOILED ! It would be difficult to describe the surprise and astonishment expressed in the countenances of the bystanders, on seeing so large a quantity of cold water heated, and actually made to boil, without any fire.
Page xxxvi - ... how it is possible for aerial vibrations to generate the sensation we call sound, or for the forces liberated by chemical changes in the brain to give rise to emotion — these are mysteries which it is impossible to fathom. But they are not profounder mysteries than the transformations of the physical forces into each other. They are not more completely beyond our comprehension than the natures of Mind and Matter. They have simply the same insolubility as all other ultimate questions. We can...

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