The Correlation and Conservation of Forces: A Series of Expositions

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D. Appleton, 1872 - 438 pages
 

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Page 245 - 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 xix - 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 of being excited and communicated in the manner the Heat was excited and communicated in these experiments, except it be MOTION.
Page 91 - 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 157 - Si forte necesse est Indiciis monstrare recentibus abdita rerum, Fingere cinctutis non exaudita Cethegis 50 Continget, dabiturque licentia sumpta pudenter ; Et nova fictaque nuper habebunt verba fidem si Qraeco fonte cadent, parce detorta.
Page xxx - How this metamorphosis takes place — how a force existing as motion, heat, or light, can become a mode of consciousness — how it is possible for aerial vibrations to generate the sensation we call sound, or for the forces liberated by chemical changes in tho brain to give rise to emotion — these are mysteries which it is impossible to fathom.
Page 72 - 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 197 - ... 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 xxx - ... consciousness — 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...
Page 115 - 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 xxxiv - The sole truth which transcends experience by underlying it, is thus the persistence of Force. This being the basis of experience, must be the basis of any scientific organization of experiences. To this an ultimate analysis brings us down; and on this a rational synthesis must build up.

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