Fragments of Science: A Series of Detached Essays, Addresses, and ReviewsLongmans, Green, 1876 - 625 pages |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
absorbed absorption action aether appeared atmosphere atoms attraction augmented beam blue body calorific carbonic acid cause chemical chemical affinity cloud colour cotton-wool dark Democritus disease distance earth effect electric emitted energy enquiry experimental tube experiments fact fall Faraday feet fever flame flask floating matter force gases germ theory glass gravity green Horseshoe Fall human hydrogen infusions intellectual invisible rays Joule light liquid luminiferous aether magnet mechanical ment mind molecular molecules motion nature nerve Niagara nitrite of amyl observed optic nerve organic oxygen particles pass Pasteur pébrine perfectly phenomena physical pipette platinum polarisation portion possess present produced proved pure putrefaction quantity question radiant heat radiation referred regards rendered result retina river scientific solar space spectrum substance surface temperature thought tion typhoid fever vapour velocity vibration vis viva visible viva waves wire
Popular passages
Page 168 - Fresh pearls to their enamel gave, And the bellowing of the savage sea Greeted their safe escape to me. I wiped away the weeds and foam, I fetched my sea-born treasures home; But the poor, unsightly, noisome things Had left their beauty on the shore With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar.
Page 300 - ... the passage from the current to the needle, if not demonstrable, is thinkable, and that we entertain no doubt as to the final mechanical solution of the problem ; but the passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of consciousness is unthinkable. Granted that a definite thought, and a definite molecular action in the brain occur simultaneously ; we do not possess the intellectual organ, nor apparently any rudiment of the organ, which would enable us to pass by a process...
Page 460 - I cross the boundary of the experimental evidence, and discern in that Matter — which we, in our ignorance of its latent powers, and notwithstanding our professed reverence for its Creator, have hitherto covered with opprobrium — the promise and potency of all terrestrial life.
Page 22 - that every particle of matter in the universe attracts every other particle, with a force whose direction is that of the line joining the two, and whose magnitude is directly as the product of their masses, and inversely as the square of their distances from each other.
Page 308 - I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed like one of these.
Page 473 - I have noticed during years of self-observation that it is not in hours of clearness and vigour that this doctrine commends itself to my mind ; that in the presence of stronger and healthier thought it ever dissolves and disappears, as offering no solution of the mystery in which we dwell, and of which we form a part.
Page 468 - The cold colossal, adamantine spirit, standing erect and clear, like a Cato Major among degenerate men: fit to have been the teacher of the Stoa, and to have discoursed of Beauty and Virtue in the groves of Academe!
Page 463 - Nature, but from the observation 'of men--a theory which converts the power whose garment is seen in the visible universe into an artificer, fashioned after the human model, and acting by broken efforts as man is seen to act. On the other side we have the conception that all we see around us, and all we feel within us --the phenomena of physical Nature as well as those of the human mind -- have their unsearchable roots in a cosmical life, if I dare apply the term, an infinitesimal span of which is...
Page 469 - ... that as regards these questions science claims unrestricted right of search. It is not to the point to say that the views of Lucretius and Bruno, of Darwin and Spencer, may be wrong. Here I should agree with you, deeming it indeed certain that these views will undergo modification.
Page 447 - Bees visit these flowers in order to gnaw the labellum ; in doing this they inevitably touch a long, tapering, sensitive projection. This, when touched, transmits a sensation or vibration to a certain membrane, which is instantly ruptured, setting...