The Materialism of the Present Day: A Critique of Dr. Büchner's System

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Williams and Norgate, 1867 - 202 pàgines
 

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Pàgina 67 - It is inconceivable that inanimate brute matter should, without the mediation of something else, which is not material, operate upon and affect other matter without mutual contact, as it must be, if gravitation, in the sense of Epicurus, be essential and inherent in it.
Pàgina 185 - To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.
Pàgina 67 - That gravity should be innate, inherent, and essential to matter, so that one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum, without the mediation of anything else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity that I believe no man, who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking, can ever fall into it. Gravity must be caused by an agent acting constantly according to certain laws ; but whether this agent...
Pàgina 195 - And analogy would lead us to believe, that the young thus reared would be apt to follow by inheritance the occasional and aberrant habit of their mother, and in their turn would be apt to lay their eggs in other birds' nests, and thus be more successful in rearing their young.
Pàgina 67 - That gravity should be innate, inherent and essential to matter, so that one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum without the mediation of anything else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to the other, is to me so great an absurdity, that I believe no man who- has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking, can ever fall into it.
Pàgina 195 - Now let us suppose that the ancient progenitor of our European cuckoo had the habits of the American cuckoo, and that she occasionally laid an egg in another bird's nest. If the old bird profited by this occasional habit through being enabled to...
Pàgina 71 - But if you suppose that the intermediate space is filled with a subtile matter, we can comprehend at once that this matter may act upon the bodies, by impelling them : the effect would be the same as if they possessed a power of mutual attraction. Now, as we know that the whole space which separates the heavenly bodies is filled with a subtile matter, called ether, it...
Pàgina 185 - His reason ought to conquer his imagination ; though I have felt the difficulty far too keenly to be surprised at any degree of hesitation in extending the principle of natural selection to such startling lengths.
Pàgina 49 - Corpus omne perseverare in statu suo quiescendi vel movendi uniformiter in directum, nisi quatenus a viribus impressis cogitur statum ilium mutare. Lex I (in edition of i726). Corpus omne perseverare in statu suo quiescendi vel movendi uniformiter in directum, nisi quatenus illud a viribus impressis cogitur statum suum mutare.
Pàgina 70 - Other philosophers consider this opinion as absurd, and contrary to the principles of a rational philosophy. They do not deny the fact : they even admit that powers exist which are the causes of the reciprocal tendency of bodies towards each other: but they maintain, that they are foreign to the bodies ; that they belong to the ether, or the...

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