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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTEB II. NATURE AS MECHANICAL. Universality of Law?The Place of Efficient Activity in Nature?Atoms, and the sense in which they are accepted?Physical Forces?Laws of Effects and of their Combination?General Inferences with respect to the Explanation of Natural Phenomena. 1. n0ME necessary connection in things has, in some sense, been sought in every age, and under every mode of thought; it is not this which is distinctive of the mechanical attitude of contemporary science, but the further speculations as to the meaning and origin of this necessity. Even the darkest superstition, thinking by futile magic to determine the destiny of the distant in space, appealed to an incomprehensible connection, according to which the desired effect was to follow its incantations. In a twofold sense the thought of science is different. The several states of things, instead of being supposed to be assigned to them merely in succession, by this incomprehensible necessity, are held to proceed intelligibly one out of another, so that each prior state contains in itself the reason why, by a universal and comprehensible law, the posterior is necessarily required a.c its consequence. And similarly each actual form of existence i is not supposed to evolve state out of state according to' a law peculiar to itself; on the contrary, the necessity that is dominant in one organism, owes its compelling power to the same universal laws which in every other also assign like to like and diverse to diverse. Thus the various spheres of contrasted phenomena that make up the universe, do not separately rest on special predispositions, having nothing in common; they are only examples of what the power of universal law establishes, under the different circumstances, whichbring phenomena under its rule in ...
| ISBN-13 | 9780217516105 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10 | 0217516106 |
| Weight | 1.54 Pounds |
| Dimensions | 9.00 x 6.00 x 1.06 In |
| List Price | $30.98 |
| Format | Paperback |
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| Pages | 478 pages |
| Publisher | |
| Published On | 2009-08-01 |
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