Short studies in physical science : mineralogy, chemistry, and physics / by Vaughan Cornish.

  • Cornish, Vaughan, 1862-1948.
Date:
1897
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Short studies in physical science : mineralogy, chemistry, and physics / by Vaughan Cornish. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. 21/ by the supposed regulation of the living world, in accordance with our own notions of what is just and right. Mechanical magic may be defined as the attempt to produce mechanical effect by mental effort. The magician could produce action without calling out the correlative reaction. He could produce physical effect at a distance, without a material connection with the body acted upon. The belief in art magic served to secure a property m mechanical inventions, which is now secured by patent rights. It was futile to imitate an invention which worked solely through the personal power of the magician. _ Witchcraft, as far as it consisted in attempts to mfluence the mind, was less irrational than mechanical magic, ihe action of mind upon mind is, at all events, not unthinkable This branch of witchcraft still flourishes, but we call it telepathy. . , ^ Astrology, which professed to trace a connection between celestial motions and the course of human life, was not inherently absurd. True, there is no apparent physical mechanism to connect the occurrences, but neither is there in the case of the connection between sun-spots and terrestrial magnetism. Astrology became absurd when men obstmately refused to draw the logical conclusion from the data accumulated during centuries of observation, that the observed coincidences of the horoscope were not systematic, but casual. Astronomy itself, in the times immediately preceding Copernicus, Gahleo, and Kepler, was hopelessly encumbered with metaphysical notions. The circle was the perfect curve, therefore the planets moved in circles. The sun was the perfect light, therefore there were no spots on the sun; and so on. Perhaps astronomers were more truly scientific in the earher days, in Chaldsea, and in Egypt. Nature- worship can scarcely have perverted natural knowledge so hopelessly as did metaphysics. The transmutation of metals was not intrinsically absurd as a guiding idea for experiment. The absurdity was in the