Force and matter : empirico-philosophical studies, intelligibly rendered with introduction written for the English edition / by Louis Büchner ; edited by J. Frederick Collingwood.

  • Büchner, Ludwig, 1824-1899.
Date:
1881
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Force and matter : empirico-philosophical studies, intelligibly rendered with introduction written for the English edition / by Louis Büchner ; edited by J. Frederick Collingwood. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    draw their inferences from the philosophical combina- tion of all details. It is only the survey of the whole —thus lately wrote to me a distinguished German scholar (whose fault is not to lose himslf in details)— which could point out the right path ! Comparative, assisted by microscopic, anatomy, broke down the old barriers ; palaeontology filled up the gaps by intermediate forms ; geology taught that the natural forces had never been different from what they are at present ; physiology showed the depend- ence of the intellectual capacities and their develop- ment on organisation ; psychology teaches that reason is an acquired faculty; anthropology finally points out the development of the races ; history and philology exhibit the rude beginnings. All our civilisation, the basis of humanity, is not nature, but art—the toilsome education of the race and of individuals, effected in thousands of years : and the physical development, from the first moment of generation, is in every individual merely a repetition of the same laws of development to which the organic world owes its existence ! How simple does all this appear to us, how forcible the inferences, were not the ' ifs' and the ' buts' rendering the minds of so many men inaccessible to the truth ! That this mode of viewing nature will ultimately prevail, I entertain no doubt whatever. This much, sir, I felt urged to write, by way of introduction to your English edition of my so vehe- mently attacked work. You and your readers will find it but natural that, during the eight years which have elapsed since the first edition of this work was issued, my views should in their expansion have partly changed, or been confirmed, an account of which is contained in my, since then, published works, Physio-