Force and nature : attraction and repulsion : the radical principles of energy, discussed in their relations to physical and morphological developments / by Charles Frederick Winslow.

Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Force and nature : attraction and repulsion : the radical principles of energy, discussed in their relations to physical and morphological developments / by Charles Frederick Winslow. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    If here and there I appear to falter and become dizzy, there will arise scholars, I am confident, who, endowed with fitter powers, will reap like giants in time to come. 2. There is a certain phase of Science to appear, now and then, in the following work—a phase always inadmissible in experimental and mathematical inquiries—to which I invite particular attention; and upon which a few remarks may be necessary, in order to establish a clear understanding in the outset between the reader and author. It is this. No system of natural or positive philosophy can reach its legitimate boundaries, comprehend nature entirely, and unfold by suc- cessive sequences into its grandest possible developments, and yet be wholly material and physical. A true and en- during system must embrace both physics and metaphysics. However material our postulates may be, they must insensi- bly extend the argument into the immaterial; inasmuch as force is immaterial. A true system must, furthermore, em- brace geometry and the algebras—not their mere physical and symbolical terms, but their high, deep, and purely intel- lectual principles, which, appertaining to psychology and exposing an absolute universality of mind and purpose, lift us freely and positively into studies of the Infinite. I have, therefore, not hesitated to trace nature to first principles through severe inductive processes, in opposition to the materialistic notions of certain writers. If I have not paused altogether at the point where experimental and mathe- matical researches are compelled' to pause in individual specialities of inquiry, it is because the design of this work will not permit such an omission. For, in a generalization