Lectures & Essays by John Tyndall: (Cullings from "Fragments of Science") ...Watts & Company, 1903 - 120 pages |
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action Alhazen animal appear Aristotle atmosphere atoms battery Belfast belief Bishop Bishop Butler blue body brain cause Christianity colours conception consciousness Darwin Democritus Descartes Diamagnetism doctrine earth edit energy Epicurus essays ethical existence experience external eyes fact Faraday Fichte FLEET STREET force glacier Goethe heat human mind hypothesis idea imagination inference intellectual J. M. ROBERTSON JOHNSON'S COURT knowledge lectures light logical Lucretius magnet matter mecha mechanical ment microscope miracles molecular molecules moral motion Mozley Mozley's muscles nerves ness Newton observation order of nature organism origin Origin of Species oxygen particles philosophy physical possess present principle produced proved question RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION reason referred reflected regards relation religion religious rendered result SAMUEL LAING scientific sense solar soul special providence spirit theory things thought tion truth Tyndall Tyndall's universe vapour waves words
Popular passages
Page 47 - ... 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 66 - I have long held an opinion, almost amounting to conviction, in common I believe with many other lovers of natural knowledge, that the various forms under which the forces of matter are made manifest have one common origin; or, in other words, are so directly related and mutually dependent, that they are convertible, as it were, one into another, and possess equivalents of power in their action.
Page 32 - 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 12 - Is there not a temptation to close to some extent with Lucretius, when he affirms that "Nature is seen to do all things spontaneously of herself, without the meddling of the gods?" or with Bruno, when he declares that Matter is not "that mere empty capacity which philosophers have pictured her to be, but the universal mother who brings forth all things as the fruit of her own womb?
Page 10 - THE GLACIERS OF THE ALPS : being a Narrative of Excursions and Ascents. An Account of the Origin and Phenomena of Glaciers, and an Exposition of the Physical Principles to which they are related.
Page 30 - With a capacity to grasp physical principles which his friend Goethe did not possess, and which even total lack of exercise has not been able to reduce to atrophy, it is the world's loss that he, in the vigor of his years, did not open his mind and sympathies to science, and make its conclusions a portion of his message to mankind.
Page 20 - Natural selection acts only by the preservation and accumulation of small inherited modifications, each profitable to the preserved being...
Page 26 - A celebrated author and divine has written to me that he has "gradually learnt to see that it is just as noble a conception of the Deity to believe that He created a few original forms capable of self-development into other and needful forms, as to believe that He required a fresh act of creation to supply the voids caused by the action of His laws.
Page 37 - Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces. "Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver and the gold broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing-floors ; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them; and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.
Page 96 - And persistent thought brought more and more clearly out the final conclusion, that every particle of matter attracts every other particle with a force varying inversely as the square of the distance between the particles.