Notices of the Proceedings, Volume 2

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Page 353 - 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 127 - ... action of a peculiar fluid, sometimes flowing, sometimes at rest. Such conceptions have their advantages and their disadvantages ; they afford peaceful lodging to the intellect for a time, but they also circumscribe it, and by-and-by, when the mind has grown too large for its lodging, it often finds difficulty in breaking down the walls of what has become its prison instead of its home...
Page 185 - Every organized being constitutes a whole, a single and complete system, whose parts mutually correspond, and concur, by their reciprocal reaction, to the same definitive end. None of these parts can be changed without aftecting the others ; and consequently, each taken separately indicates and gives all the rest.
Page 151 - ... interval; this may be viewed as the expression of electrical power received from the unit jar. The experiment is now repeated, the wire between the balls having been removed, and therefore the "tip...
Page 353 - For my own part, many considerations urge my mind toward the idea of a cause of gravity, which is not resident in the particles of matter merely, but constantly in them, and all space.
Page 294 - They appear to me only resolvable on the supposition that crystalline or polar forces acted upon the whole mass simultaneously in one direction and with adequate force.
Page 360 - Well, then, if it be unfounded even in its application to the smallest part of the science of force, the proof must be within our reach, for all physical science is so. In that case, discoveries as large or larger than any yet made, may be anticipated. I do not resist the search for them, for no one can do harm, but only good, who works with an earnest and truthful spirit in such a direction. But let us not admit the destruction or creation of force without clear and constant proof. Just as the chemist...
Page 326 - And that which casts our proficiency therein so much behind is our time lost partly in too oft idle vacancies given both to schools and universities; partly in a preposterous exaction, forcing the empty wits of children to compose themes, verses, and orations, which are the acts of ripest judgment and the final work of a head filled by long reading and observing with elegant maxims and copious invention.
Page 327 - Columella, for the matter is most easy; and if the language be difficult, so much the better, it is not a difficulty above their years. And here will be an occasion of [inciting and enabling them hereafter to improve the tillage of their country, to recover the bad soil, and to remedy the waste that is made of good ; for this was one of Hercules
Page 6 - ... a cubical space and produce an experimental chamber. When excited, these magnets were very powerful in the outer direction, as was found by nails, filings, spirals, and needles ; but within the chamber, walled in on every side by intense north poles, there was no power of any kind : filings were not arranged ; small needles not affected, except as they by their own inducing powers caused arrangement of the force within ; revolving wire helices produced no currents : the chamber was a place of...

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