Croonian lectures on matter and force : given at the Royal College of Physicians in 1868 / by Henry Bence Jones.

  • Jones, Bence, 1814-1873.
Date:
1868
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Croonian lectures on matter and force : given at the Royal College of Physicians in 1868 / by Henry Bence Jones. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    13/236 (page 3)
    ! perfect knowledge which is based upon reason and demonstration, and not on external or internal authority. In this lecture, I intend to bring before you tthe history of our ideas regarding the union of :ponderable matter and force in those sciences into which the idea of life does not enter. Three distinct stages of ideas or epochs of thought may be clearly recognised. The first may be considered as the authori- ttative stage, or that of complete separation between the ideas of ponderable matter and force, lhis stage may be summed up in two swords, materialism, and immaterialism or 'Spiritualism. It may be called primitive, 'because it implies a state of almost complete dgnorance of the first principles of natural knowledge. The second stage is founded partly on authority and partly on natural knowledge. It marked by the incomplete separation between ' the ideas of ponderable matter and force. Force is held to be imponderable matter, or to be 1 inseparably united with imponderable matter. fThis may be called the stage of imponderable