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A Grammar of Natural and Experimental Philosophy ...
A Grammar of Natural and Experimental Philosophy Author:Richard Phillips Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: GRAMMAR PHILOSOPHY. OF MATTER AND ITS PROPERTIES. 1. Matter is the general name of every thing or substance, that has length, breadth, and thickness. ... more » Obs. Philosophers have in all ages discussed the general nature of matter, but without arriving at any satisfactory result. This is certain, that all we know of matter is merely relative to our own powers and senses; and those relative properties, being all we can know, are the proper objects of Philosophical inquiry. 2. The properties of all matter or substance, are SOLIDITY, DIVISIBILITY, MOBILITY, and INERTNESS. 3. Solidity is that property which every substance possesses, of not permitting any other substance to occupy the same place at the same time. - Illustration 1. If a piece ofwoodormetal occupy a certain Bjpace, before any thing else can take possession of that space, the wood or metal must be removed. 2. Water and even air, have this property. Experiment 1. If some water be put into a tube closed at one end, and a piece of wood be inserted that fits the inside of the tube very accurately, it will be impossible by any force to get the wooden piston to the bottom of the tube, unless the water is first taken away. 2. The expe.rim.en1; jmxy also be made with air, instead of water. Corollary. Therefore water, air, and all other fluids, are, with reference to space, equally solid with the hardest bodies. 4. Divisibility, is that property of matter, by which its pnrts may be divided and separated from each other. Of this division there can be no end. Itlus. 1. Since matter can never be annihilated by division, so we can never imagine it to be cut into such small particles, that any one of them shall not have an upper and under surface, which may be separated, if we have instruments fine e...« less