Kosmos: Entwurf einer physischen Weltbeschreibung, Volume 3

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Page 33 - To tell us that every species of thing is endowed with an occult specific quality by which it acts and produces manifest effects, is to tell us nothing : but to derive two or three general principles of motion from phaenomena, and afterwards to tell us how the properties and actions of all corporeal things follow from these manifest principles, would be a very great step in philosophy...
Page 33 - But to derive two or three general principles of motion from phaenomena, and afterwards to tell us how the properties and actions of all corporeal things follow from those manifest principles, would be a very great step in philosophy, though the causes of those principles were not yet discovered. And therefore I scruple not to propose the principles of motion above mentioned, they being of very general extent, and leave their causes to be found out.
Page 33 - How these attractions may be performed, I do not here consider. What I call 'attraction' may be performed 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 toward one another, whatsoever be the cause.
Page 358 - I think, I may safely say, that there can be little, if any doubt as to the resolvability of the Nebula.
Page 212 - This remarkable belt has maintained, from the earliest ages, the same relative situation among the stars; and, when examined through powerful telescopes, is found (wonderful to relate!) to consist entirely of stars scattered by millions, like glittering dust, on the black ground of the general heavens.
Page 555 - ... proportionnelles à leurs distances à cet astre. Alors, la lune sans cesse en opposition au soleil, eût décrit autour de lui une ellipse semblable à celle de la terre; ces deux astres se seraient succédé l'un à l'autre sur l'horizon; et comme à cette distance la lune n'eût point été éclipsée, sa lumière aurait constamment remplacé celle du soleil.
Page 554 - ... privés à la fois de la lumière du Soleil et de celle de la Lune. Pour y parvenir, il eût suffi de mettre à l'origine la Lune en opposition avec le Soleil dans le plan même de l'écliptique, à une distance...
Page 115 - ... we have ourselves heard it stated by a celebrated optician, that the earliest circumstance which drew his attention to astronomy was the regular appearance, at a certain hour, for several successive days, of a considerable star, through the shaft of a chimney.
Page 429 - ... the most intensely ignited solids appear only as black spots on the disc of the sun, when held between it and the eye.
Page 123 - ... sur les bords du diaphragme circulaire. Le phénomène n'est pas constant, parce que les rayons qui interfèrent dans un certain moment n'interfèrent pas un instant après, lorsqu'ils ont traversé des couches atmosphériques dont le pouvoir réfringent a varié. On trouve dans cette expérience la preuve manifeste du rôle que joue dans le phénomène de la scintillation l'inégale réfrangibilité des couches atmosphériques traversées par les rayons dont le faisceau est trèsétroit.

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