Natural Philosophy for Beginners - 1881 Author:Isaac Todhunter 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: 18 III. NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. 54. It is the design of the present work to consider an important part of the second of the five classes into which we have div... more »ided knowledge in Art. 43 ; and it will be convenient here to offer a few preliminary remarks which will bring the more important facts into view. The reader will probably not fully comprehend at first all that this chapter contains, but he can hardly fail to obtain from it some general notions which will be of assistance to him as he proceeds through the rest of the work. The advance in knowledge which an individual student obtains by the devotion of time and attention to a science is similar in character to the progress which the science itself makes iu the course of ages; the student can trace his way backwards to a clearer view of the first principles, and forwards to more extensive developments and applications. 55. In such a sketch as we are now about to give, the reader enters into possession of knowledge which has been accumulated by centuries of thought and labour. The tendency of this long series of investigations has been to produce a firm conviction that order and law prevail throughout nature; and that often apparently contradictory phenomena result from the operation of one general principle. Thus, for instance, most things fall to the ground when unsupported, while a few, like smoke, or bubbles, or balloons rise. Hence it might seem that there is a difference in the structure of bodies or in the substance of which they consist, in virtue of which some will descend and some will ascend, when set free. The notion is embodied in the well- known witticism respecting a man who gained an eminent position by a discreet sobriety of manner, and then lost respect by his want of official decorum : " contrary to the ...« less