Explanations: A Sequel to "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation"Wiley & Putnam, 1846 - 142 páginas |
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Términos y frases comunes
admitted affinities ages American animal kingdom appear argument arrangement articulata ascertained birds called carboniferous cephalaspis cephalopods cestraceon character coccosteus commencement critic crustacea ctenoids Deity development theory dicotyledons divine earth Edinburgh reviewer edition electric embryo evidence existence experiments fact favor fishes flora formation forms fossil bands fossiliferous fossils fucoids fungus geological geologists highest idea inferior invertebrated land vegetation limestone living Lower Silurians lowest Lyell mammals marine marsupials matter mind mollusca mollusks naturalist nebular hypothesis nebulous objections observation Old Red Sandstone oolite organic creation origin particular phenomena philosophical plants present Professor progress proof reader regard remark reptiles reptilian sauroids says scale seen Silurian rocks sivatherium speak species strata structure suppose terrestrial animals tertiary tion traces true truth Upper Silurians vertebrata vertebrated vessel Vestiges W. H. WEEKES whole writer
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Página xxxiv - THE FRUITS AND FRUIT TREES OF AMERICA, Or, the Culture, Propagation, and Management in the Garden and Orchard of Fruit Trees generally; with descriptions of all the finest varieties of fruit, native and foreign, cultivated in this country.
Página 127 - The process of tracing regularity in any complicated, and at first sight confused set of appearances, is necessarily tentative: we begin by making any supposition, even a false one, to see what consequences will follow from it; and by observing how these differ from the real phenomena, we learn what corrections to make in our assumption.
Página 127 - Let any one watch the manner in which he himself unravels any complicated mass of evidence ; let him observe how, for instance, he elicits the true history of any occurrence from the involved statements of one or of many witnesses : he will find that he does not take all the items of evidence into his mind at once, and attempt to weave them together...
Página 104 - ... and the monsoons. Lightning might once have been supposed to obey no laws ; but since it has been ascertained to be identical with electricity, we know that the very same phenomenon in some of its manifestations is implicitly obedient to the action of fixed causes.
Página 11 - A little after the stoppage of the rotatory motion of the disc, the ring of oil, losing its own motion, gathers once more into a sphere. If, however, a smaller disc be used, and its rotation continued after the separation of the ring, rotatory motion and centrifugal force will be generated in the alcoholic fluid, and the oil ring, thus prevented from returning into the globular form, divides itself into " several isolated masses, each of which immediately takes the globular form.
Página 103 - First, that we now know it directly to be true of by far the greatest number of phenomena ; that there are none of which we know it not to be true, the utmost that can be said being, that of some we cannot positively, from direct evidence, affirm its truth...
Página 103 - ... that (although the generalizing propensity must have prompted mankind from almost the beginning of their experience to ascribe all events to some cause more or less mysterious) the conviction that phenomena have invariable laws, and follow with regularity certain antecedent phenomena, was only acquired gradually; and extended itself, as knowledge advanced, from one order of phenomena to another, beginning with those whose laws were most accessible to observation.
Página 126 - When the awakened and craving mind asks what science can do for us in explaining the great ends of the Author of nature, and our relations to Him, to good and evil, to life and to eternity...
Página 31 - ... animals now lived, is surely in itself a strong proof that, in the course of nature, time was necessary for the creation of the superior creatures. And if so, it undoubtedly is a powerful evidence of such a theory of development as that which I have presented. If not, let me hear an equally plausible reason for the great and amazing fact, that seas were for numberless ages destitute of fish. I fix my opponents down to the consideration of this fact, so that no diversion respecting high molluscs...
Página 128 - ... he extemporizes, from a few of the particulars, a first rude theory of the mode in which the facts took place, and then looks at the other statements one by one, to try whether they can be reconciled with that provisional theory, or what corrections or additions it requires to make it square with them.