"Natural philosophy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... generally known. The use of the load-stone not being as yet discovered, navigation was conducted in the day-time by the sun, and in the night, by the observation of certain stars. Geography was cultivated during the present period by Strabo and Mela. In natural philosophy little progress was made; but a strong desire of its improvement was entertained, particularly by Virgil. Human anatomy being not yet introduced, physiology was imperfect. Chemistry, as a science, was utterly unknown. In medicine, the writings of Hippocrates, and other Greek physicians, were ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... it was his natural proclivities that gave rise to his system of philosophy. He attributes a real existence to the material as well as to the immaterial world, but permits it a different mode of existence. He makes history a necessity. This natural philosophy conveys to us no knowledge of God, and the little it does reveal appears opposed to religion. What God performs takes place because it must be. Schelling created two opposite and parallel philosophic sciences, the transcendental philosophy and the philosophy of Nature. ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... surprise of his majesty and the courtiers, when the dear little creature arrived with the elephant's proboscis hanging out of its divine little bill. However, after the first astonishment was over, his majesty, who to be sure was wisdom itself, and who understood natural philosophy that it was a charm to hear him discourse of those matters, and who was actually making a collection of dried beasts and birds in twelve thousand volumes of the best fool's-cap paper, immediately ...
— Hieroglyphic Tales • Horace Walpole
... 45-horse power, were perpetually engaged in washing the soiled linen of the hospital. The large and rapidly-moving cylinder which churns the linen is a common part of a steam laundry, but the wringing machine is one of the most beautiful practical applications of a principle in natural philosophy that I ever saw. It consists of a large perforated cylinder, open at the top, with a case in the centre. This cylinder performs from 400 to 700 revolutions in a minute, and, by the power of the centrifugal ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... of his, of the name of William Smith, a youth of seventeen years of age; who, in the year 1794, attended the embassy to Tippoo Sultan, when the hostage princes were restored; and who went through a course of experiments in natural philosophy, in the presence of the sultan. I answered Dr. Bell that, before I left England, I had read, in his account of the asylum, extracts from this William Smith's letters, whilst he was at the sultan's court; and that I remembered all the experiments ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... any other country, and that they are wonderfully perfect for a first essay, yet every human essay must have defects. It will remain, therefore, to those now coming on the stage of public affairs, to perfect what has been so well begun by those going off it. Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, Natural History, Anatomy, Chemistry, Botany, will become amusements for your hours of relaxation, and auxiliaries to your principal studies. Precious and delightful ones they will be. As soon as such a foundation is laid in them, as you may build on as you please, hereafter, I suppose ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... reverent, no small merit in a young officer and London beau. Indeed Betty could almost have forgotten his presence, if gleams from his glittering equipments had not kept glancing before her eyes, turn them where she would, and if Mr. Arden's sermon had not been of Solomon's extent of natural philosophy, and so full of Hebrew, Greek, and Latin that she could not follow it ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... these, by any combinations however complicated, suffice for proving even such truths, relating to complex cases, as could be proved, if we chose, by inductions from specific experience. Every branch of natural philosophy was originally experimental; each generalization rested on a special induction, and was derived from its own distinct set of observations and experiments. From being sciences of pure experiment, ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... crime,"—and he proceeded to develop his thesis, standing both feet in the kennel, as he had once been used to perorate, seated in one of Baron d'Holbach's gilt armchairs, which, as he was fond of saying, formed the basis of natural philosophy. ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... The prevalent natural philosophy of the present day is that which is called corpuscular, because it assumes the existence of a first matter, consisting of corpuscula or atoms, which are supposed to be definite, though extremely small, quantities, ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... were a grown-up lad, and I were teaching you natural philosophy, I should have here a fine opportunity for explaining what is called the theory of the lever. But I think the theory of the lever would frighten you; so we must get out of the difficulty ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... Air and on Natural Philosophy. They are classics. All conversant with their contents agree that the experimental work was marvelous. Priestley's discovery of oxygen was epoch-making, but does not represent all that he did. Twice he just escaped the discovery of nitrogen. One wonders how this occurred. ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... again at Oxford, where he pursued his studies under the patronage of Bishop Robert Grostete. He made himself a perfect master of Greek in order to understand Aristotle in the original, and working on by himself he proceeded far beyond any chemist of his time in discoveries in natural philosophy. Grostete and the more enlightened men of the university provided him with means to carry on his experiments, and, in twenty years he had expended no less than L2,000: but not without mighty results; for ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... loved to quote from Racine, Corneille, Boileau, Moliere, Montaigne, and Fenelon. Likewise he had gleaned much history from Segur, and much of the old classics from French translations of them; but for mathematics, natural philosophy, or contemporary literature he cared nothing whatever. However, he knew how to be silent in conversation, as well as when to make general remarks on authors whom he had never read—such as Goethe, Schiller, ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... the education of young ladies, situated in the flourishing town of Rockland. This was an establishment on a considerable scale, in which a hundred scholars or thereabouts were taught the ordinary English branches, several of the modern languages, something of Latin, if desired, with a little natural philosophy, metaphysics, and rhetoric, to finish off with in the last year, and music at any time when they would pay for it. At the close of their career in the Institute, they were submitted to a grand public examination, and received diplomas ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... been favorably known as a teacher and also a writer of educational books. This elementary work on Natural Philosophy strikes us as being one of his most useful and happy efforts."—N. ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... of primitive animism? If so, we should be deceived by appearances. Religions do not fall back into infancy as they grow old. The pagans of the fourth century no longer naively considered their gods as capricious genii, as the disordered powers of a confused natural philosophy; they conceived them as cosmic energies whose providential action was regulated in a harmonious system. Faith was no longer instinctive and impulsive, for erudition and reflection had reconstructed the entire theology. In a ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... things improve and amuse the senses when introduced as a kind of show, to the principles of which, dryly laid down, children would turn a deaf ear. For instance, botany, mechanics, and astronomy, reading, writing, arithmetic, natural history, and some simple experiments in natural philosophy, might fill up the day; but these pursuits should never encroach on gymnastic plays in the open air. The elements of religion, history, the history of man, and politics might also be taught by conversations ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... construction, as he would have given it to a builder. He then gave briefer directions as to the management of the institution. The orphans were to be plainly but wholesomely fed, clothed, and lodged; instructed in the English branches, in geometry, natural philosophy, the French and Spanish languages, and whatever else might be deemed suitable and beneficial to them. "I would have them," says the will, "taught facts and things, rather than words or signs." At the conclusion of the course, the pupils were to be apprenticed to "suitable ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... ever, and I love all the honest souls that meet at the London Coffee House.... I labor for peace with more earnestness that I may again be happy in your sweet society.' Franklin thought that war was folly. In a letter to Dr. Price, he speaks of the great improvements in natural philosophy, and then says: 'There is one improvement in moral philosophy which I wish to see: the discovery of a plan that would induce and oblige nations to settle their disputes without ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... there are talents and qualities possessed only by the exclusion of some others. Among mankind some are filled with the love of glory, and are not susceptible of any other of the passions: some may excel in natural philosophy, civil law, geometry, and, in short, in all the sciences that consist in the comparison of ideas. A fondness for any other study can only distract or precipitate them into errors. There are other men susceptible not Only of the love of glory, but an infinite number of ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... newest Russ, Bohemian, and other Slaavic publications, and after a short conversation visited the classes then sitting. The end of education in Servia being practical, prominence is given to geometry, natural philosophy, Slaavic history and literature, &c. Latin and Greek are admitted to have been the keys to polite literature, some two centuries and a half ago; but so many lofty and noble chambers having been opened since then, and routine having no existence in Servia, her youth are not destined to spend ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... of these possible College courses, and the one most likely to be useful and fruitful for the mass of the male population in a modern community, is an expansion of the Physics of the Schooling stage. It may be very conveniently spoken of as the Natural Philosophy, course. Its backbone will be an interlocking arrangement of Mathematics, Physics, and the principles of Chemistry, and it will take up as illustrative and mind-expanding exercises, Astronomy, Geography, and Geology conceived as ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... philosophy was divided into three great branches; physics, or natural philosophy; ethics, or moral philosophy; and logic. This general division seems perfectly agreeable ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... bad Latin which some Presbyterian teachers had uttered while seated in academic chairs lately occupied by great scholars. Much was said about the ignorant contempt which the victorious barbarians professed for science and literature. They were accused of anathematizing the modern systems of natural philosophy as damnable heresies, of condemning geometry as a souldestroying pursuit, of discouraging even the study of those tongues in which the sacred books were written. Learning, it was said, would soon be extinct in Scotland. The Universities, under their new rulers, were languishing and must soon ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Mode of Motion: being a Course of Twelve Lectures delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain in the Season of 1862. By John Tyndall, F.R.S., etc., Professor of Natural Philosophy in the Royal Institution. With Illustrations. New York. D. Appleton & Co. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... for many years Professor of Natural Philosophy at the Royal Institution, London, where his researches did more to subdue electricity to the service of man than those of any other physicist who ever lived. "Faraday as a Discoverer," by Professor John Tyndall (his successor) depicts ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... occurred on board of the ship during the afternoon, that they were in a mutinous frame of mind, he was not willing to encourage their insubordination. He was much disturbed by the difficult problem thus thrust upon him. Dr. Carboy, the professor of natural philosophy and chemistry, who had spent several years in Germany, had volunteered to take charge of the runaways, and he seemed to be the only person who was available for this duty. He was no sailor, and only a fair disciplinarian, and Mr. Lowington had not entire confidence ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... Beauclerk at his house at Windsor, where he was entertained with experiments in natural philosophy[737]. One Sunday, when the weather was very fine, Beauclerk enticed him, insensibly, to saunter about all the morning. They went into a church-yard, in the time of divine service, and Johnson laid himself down at his ease upon one of the tomb-stones. 'Now, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... of the Nineteenth Century," by Robert Routledge, Assistant Examiner in Chemistry and in Natural Philosophy to ...
— Pressure, Resistance, and Stability of Earth • J. C. Meem
... many topics treated of in this book of which I am not a judge; but I do pretend, even where I cannot criticize in detail, to have an opinion as to the general tone of thought. When Herschel writes his Introduction to Natural Philosophy, I cannot test all he says, but I cannot err about his fairness, his manliness, and wide range of knowledge. When Jouffroy writes his lectures, I am not conversant with all his topics of thought, but I can appreciate his lucid style and admirable method. When Webster speaks on the currency, I do ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... the knowledge of these things? A. By frequent observations and the experiments made in natural philosophy, which have decided to a certainty that nature gives a perfection to all things, if she has time ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... nothing for my apologies, and very far from being angry he almost choked with laughter. This was the happy result of the practical and natural philosophy which Frenchmen cultivate so well, and which insures the happiness of their existence ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... men most basely efface in themselves by sin. He speaks of the dignity and spiritual nature of the soul, and the future resurrection of the body, and concludes with an anatomical description of it, which shows him to have been well skilled in medicine, and in that branch of natural philosophy, for that age. The two homilies on the words, Let us make man, are falsely ascribed to him. When {554} desired by one Caesarius to prescribe him rules of a perfect virtue, he did this by his Life of Moses, the pattern of virtue. He closes it with this ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... Minister:—"If men be not all their lifetime under a teacher to learn Logic, Natural Philosophy, Ethics, or Mathematics, ... certainly it is not necessary to the attainment of Christian knowledge that men should sit all their life long at the foot of a pulpited divine, while he, a lollard indeed over his elbow-cushion, ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... a professor of natural philosophy now at Naples, of the name of Amici, from Modena, who has invented a microscope of immense power. The circulation of the blood in the thigh of a frog (the coldest animal in nature), when viewed thro' this microscope, appears to take place with the rapidity ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... he was wanted. It consisted in blowing the horn for him. Now, this was no common horn, but the voice of a giant imprisoned in a cylinder. Jack could have explained it upon the principle of compressed air, for he was studying natural philosophy; but Mr. Sheridan's Michael once ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... learning and the sciences, it has been almost constantly neglected or misrepresented, by divines especially. The manner of treating these subjects in the science of human nature, should be precisely the same as in natural philosophy; from particular facts to investigate the stated order in which they appear, and then apply the general law, thus discovered, to the explication of other appearances and the improvement ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... the monks to whom the superintendence of the establishment was confided had understood the organisation of his mind, if they had engaged more able mathematical professors, or if we had had any incitement to the study of chemistry, natural philosophy, astronomy, etc., I am convinced that Bonaparte would have pursued these sciences with all the genius and spirit of investigation which he displayed in a career, more brilliant it is true, but less useful to mankind. Unfortunately, the monks did not perceive this, and were too poor to pay ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... had been keeping them hard at work. Some of Vincent's friends had been at the Virginia Military Institute at Lexington, where Jackson was professor of natural philosophy and instructor of artillery. ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... "Natural philosophy, my son, is the science of cause and reason. Now, for instance, you see the steam coming out of that kettle, but you don't know why, or for what reason it does ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... he became a 'reading man,' and graduated Bachelor of Arts in 1563. The next year he shifted his quarters to Merton, where he gave public lectures on Greek. In 1566 he became a Master of Arts, took to the study of natural philosophy, and three years later was Junior Proctor. He remained in residence until 1576, thus spending seventeen years in the University. In the last-mentioned year he obtained leave of absence to travel on the Continent, ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... Part of the Kingdom." His father, Nehemiah Vinegar, presided over history and politics; his uncle, Counsellor Vinegar, over law and judicature; and Dr. John Vinegar his cousin, over medicine and natural philosophy. To others of the family—including Mrs. Joan Vinegar, who was charged with domestic affairs—were allotted classic literature, poetry and the Drama, and fashion. This elaborate scheme was not very strictly adhered to, and the chief writer of ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... natural philosophy have a bearing on this subject. It seems to be settled that the red color of blood is owing to iron contained in the red blood-cells, while it is established as a fact that the sun's rays are metallic, ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... led by McClellan. Bronzed, soldierly, chivalrous, an able if over-cautious general, he waited, irresolute, and at last postponed his battle. He would tarry for McDowell who, obeying orders from Washington, had turned aside to encounter and crush a sometime professor of natural philosophy with a gift for travelling like a meteor, for confusing like a Jack-o'-lantern, and for striking the bull's-eye of the moment like a silver bullet or a William Tell arrow. Between Richmond and the many and heavy ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... "Conversations on Natural Philosophy," in one volume, by a lady, is nearly as simple and clear as the "Scientific Dialogues;" it will serve usefully as a successor to them. It is a great assistance to the memory to read a different ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... same strain. 'People who think that Germany is still as barbarous as it was in the days of Caesar should read what Jerome has to say about it. The abundance of old books in existence shows that Germany had many learned men in the past; who have left carefully written manuscripts on oratory, poetry, natural philosophy, theology and all kinds of erudition. All down the Rhine you will find the walls and roofs of monasteries adorned with elegant epigrams which testify to German taste of old. To-day there are Germans who can translate the Greek classics into ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... desperate resource, the army; and that he knew it was so, more or less, in any great railway staff. He had been, when young (if I could believe it, sitting in that hut,—he scarcely could), a student of natural philosophy, and had attended lectures; but he had run wild, misused his opportunities, gone down, and never risen again. He had no complaint to offer about that. He had made his bed, and he lay upon it. It was far too ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... grassy slopes of the Knoll. Of course there were many lessons that could be given only in class rooms, but recitations, examinations and mental exercises generally were relegated to regions beyond the threshold. Botany, geology, natural history and what was then called natural philosophy were taught among the rocks, in the woods and in the fields with ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... the lectures of Professor Jeremiah Day on natural philosophy and Professor Benjamin Sieliman on chemistry, and it was then he imbibed his earliest knowledge of electricity. In 1809-10 Dr. Day was teaching from Enfield's text-book on philosophy, that 'if the (electric) circuit be interrupted, the fluid will become visible, and when: it passes ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... these more or less political speculations, there came into existence in this period, by no mere chance, a school of thought which never succeeded in fully developing in China, concerned with natural science and comparable with the Greek natural philosophy. We have already several times pointed to parallels between Chinese and Indian thoughts. Such similarities may be the result of mere coincidence. But recent findings in Central Asia indicate that direct connections between India, Persia, and China may have ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... are truths connected with natural philosophy which he dreamed not of. I bear a charmed life, and it was but accident which produced a similar effect upon the latent springs of my existence in the house to which the executioner conducted me, to what would ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... Birmingham, Irving made excursions to Kenilworth, Warwick, and Stratford-on-Avon, and a tour through Wales with James Renwick, a young American of great promise, who at the age of nineteen had for a time filled the chair of natural philosophy in Columbia College. He was a son of Mrs. Jane Renwick, a charming woman and a life-long friend of Irving, the daughter of the Rev. Andrew Jeffrey, of Lochmaben, Scotland, and famous in literature as "The Blue-Eyed Lassie" of Burns. From another song, "When first ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... went back once more to his old employer, Keimer. About this time he established a debating society, or club of persons of his own age, for the discussion of subjects connected with morals, politics, and natural philosophy. These discussions gradually assumed political importance, and had a great effect in stimulating the public mind during the War ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... King did not see fit to restore him to public employment, he would be ready to give private counsel; and he would apply himself to any "literary province" that the King appointed. "I am like ground fresh. If I be left to myself I will graze and bear natural philosophy; but if the King will plough me up again, and sow me with anything, I hope to give him some yield." "Your Majesty hath power; I have faith. Therefore a miracle may be wrought." And he proposes, for matters in which his pen might be useful, first, as "active" works, the recompiling of laws; the disposing ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... of each science." And, finally, he asserts that the gradations thus established a priori among the sciences, and the parts of each science, "is in essential conformity with the order which has spontaneously taken place among the branches of natural philosophy;" or, in other words—corresponds with the order of ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... which they belong, but contribute powerfully to fix it in the memory. If you can spare the time from your severer studies, and if your tutor does not disapprove, I should strongly advise you to attend in succession the lectures on natural philosophy,—on chemistry,—on mineralogy,—and on geology. Some acquaintance with these sciences, is in itself so interesting and useful, and is now so general, that you ought not, I think, to miss your present opportunity of acquiring it: so favourable an opportunity ...
— Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford - In Ten Letters, From an Uncle to His Nephew • Edward Berens
... an incident that will give my readers a little insight into my impulses. At Liberty School we had a class in Smellie's "Natural Philosophy." There was an argument among the girls. Some said animals had reasoning faculties. Others said not. Miss Jennie Johnson, our teacher, said: "Have that for a question to debate on in your society." So it was ordered. I was given the affirmative. The Friday came. ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... Scotland. At the University I succeeded in carrying a bursary of 14l. 10s. per annum, tenable for four years. I was first medallist in the class of Logic and Metaphysics, thirteenth prizeman in Mathematics, and had a certificate of merit in the class of Natural Philosophy, as will be ...
— Better Dead • J. M. Barrie
... be owned that the captain's slumbers were by no means sound; he was agitated by the consciousness that he had hitherto been unable to account for his strange experiences by any reasonable theory. Though far from being advanced in the knowledge of natural philosophy, he had been instructed, to a certain degree, in its elementary principles; and, by an effort of memory, he managed to recall some general laws which he had almost forgotten. He could understand that an altered inclination of the earth's axis with regard to the ecliptic would introduce ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... which above all others employs their thoughts [i.e. the thoughts of the 'young gentlemen of our times']. These are the studies of their graver hours, while for their amusements they have the vast circle of connoisseurship, painting, music, statuary, and natural philosophy, or rather unnatural, which deals in the wonderful, and knows nothing of nature, except her monsters and imperfections" ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... was called "collection." At the present time the expression is applied to terminal examinations, and this use of it originated from the circumstance that fees were paid by the scholars varying in accordance with the subject of study. For grammar the statutable amount was eightpence, for natural philosophy fourpence, and for logic threepence per term, and it was usual to reckon four terms to the year. To each scholar were allotted two servants—a superior and an inferior; the former receiving threepence, ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... turned philosopher. His philosophy was not so much a philosophy of nature as it was a natural philosophy—the long, serene thoughts of a man who had lived in the tranquil spirit of the trees. He was not pagan; he was not pantheist; but he did not much divide between nature and human nature, nor between human nature and ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... he received the degree A. M. from his alma mater for special work done in Natural Philosophy, Latin ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... For the attitude of Leibnetz, Hutchinson, and the others named toward the Newtonian theory, see Lecky, History of England in the Eighteenth Century, chap. ix. For John Wesley, see his Compendium of Natural Philosophy, being a Survey of the Wisdom of God in the Creation, London, 1784. See also Leslie Stephen, Eighteenth Century, vol. ii, p. 413. For Owen, see his Works, vol. xix, p. 310. For Cotton Mather's view, see The Christian ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... and the power and might of the immortal gods." Strabo also speaks of their teaching in moral science.[1050] As has been seen, it is easy to exaggerate all this. Their astronomy was probably of a humble kind and mingled with astrology; their natural philosophy a mass of cosmogonic myths and speculations; their theology was rather mythology; their moral philosophy a series of maxims such as are found in all barbaric communities. Their medical lore, to judge from what Pliny says, was largely magical. Some Druids, e.g. in the south of ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... soon perceive, in perusing this work, that he is often supposed to have previously acquired some slight knowledge of natural philosophy, a circumstance, indeed, which appears very desirable. The author's original intention was to commence this work by a small tract, explaining, on a plan analogous to this, the most essential rudiments of that science. This idea she has since abandoned; but the manuscript was ready, ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... vulgar prejudices in favour of titles, dignities, honours, and the like, held a very low rank indeed. Nor perhaps would the beauties of the body be so much affected to be held cheap, were they, in their nature, to be bought and delivered. But for me, whose natural philosophy all resided in the favourite center of sense, and who was ruled by its powerful instinct in taking pleasure by its right handle, I could scarce have made a choice ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit: and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not. Histories make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics subtile; natural philosophy deep; moral grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend. Abeunt studia in mores.[52] Nay, there is no stond or impediment in the wit but may be wrought out by fit studies; like as diseases of the body may have appropriate exercises. Bowling ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... 300 feet higher, by a winding path, is Il Paradisino, a little hermitage romantically situated on a projecting rock commanding a grand view. The scagliola decorations in the chapel were by an Englishman, Father Hugford, who excelled in various branches of natural philosophy, and in the art of imitating marble by that composition called scagliola. He died in the last century. The ascent to the summit of the Protomagno occupies 1 hour; guide 2 fr. The road to Camaldoli winds round the mountain that shelters Vallombrosa ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... earth by the fusion of mineral substances, that I beg the particular attention of the reader to that subject. The effect of compression upon compound substances, submitted to increased degrees of heat, is not a matter of supposition, it is an established principle in natural philosophy. This, like every other physical principle, is founded upon matter of fact or experience; we find, that many compound substances may with heat be easily changed, by having their more volatile parts separated when under a small compression; ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... Classes was at St Andrews. I had a craving to acquaint myself with a city noted in story, and I could not, under the canopy of my native sky, have planted the step among scenes more closely interwoven with past national transactions, or fraught with more interesting associations. In attending the Natural Philosophy Class, not being proficient in mathematic lore, I derived less advantage than had otherwise been the case with me. Yet I did not sit wholly in the shade, notwithstanding that the light which shone upon me did not ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... enthusiastic degree: "Ah, these are tones of the Eternal Melodies, are not they? A man might thank Heaven had he such a gift; almost as WE might for succeeding here, Gentlemen!" [Professor Robison, then a Naval Junior, in the boat along with Wolfe, afterwards a well-known Professor of Natural Philosophy at Edinburgh, was often heard, by persons whom I have heard again, to repeat this Anecdote. See Playfair, BIOGRAPHICAL ACCOUNT OF PROFESSOR ROBISON,—in Transactions of Royal Society of Edinburgh, vii. 495 et seq.] Next ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... being, having by experience learned the power of his arts over others, trying what may be the power of will over his own frame, and studying all that in natural philosophy may increase that power. He loves life, he dreads death; he wills to live on. He cannot restore himself to youth, he cannot entirely stay the progress of death, he cannot make himself immortal in the flesh and blood; ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... Natural Philosophy quickens this Taste of the Creation, and renders it not only pleasing to the Imagination, but to the Understanding. It does not rest in the Murmur of Brooks, and the Melody of Birds, in the Shade of Groves and Woods, or in the Embroidery of Fields and Meadows, ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... a Dominican friar, said to be well skilled in the natural philosophy and physic of his time, left a manuscript inscribed Aaron Danielis. He therein treats De re Herbaria, de Arboribus, Fructibus, &c. He flourished about the year 1379.—N. B. I have copied this article from Dr. Pulteney's Sketches, vol. 1, ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... the sitting-room, where Faith came from time to time as she got a chance, to begin some things with him and learn how to begin others by herself. The morning glided by very fast on such smooth wheels of action, and dinner came with the first Natural Philosophy lesson yet unfinished. It was finished afterwards however, and then Mr. Linden prepared himself to go forth on some expedition, of which he only said that it was a ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... and as one man for a stipend of twelve hundred livres a year, was to do it all, a compromise became necessary, and it has been agreed for the present, that infants of six years shall be taught only reading, writing, gymnastics, geometry, geography, natural philosophy, and history of all free nations, and that of all the tyrants, the rights of man, and the patriotic songs. —Yet, after these years of consideration, and days of debate, the Assembly has done no more than a parish-clerk, or an old ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... have had; But finds too soon his want of Eloquence, The silly prattler speaks no word of sense; But feeling utterance fail his great desires Sits down in silence, deeply he admires, Thus weak brained I, reading thy lofty stile, Thy profound learning, viewing other while; Thy Art in natural Philosophy, Thy Saint like mind in grave Divinity; Thy piercing skill in high Astronomy, And curious insight in anatomy; Thy Physick, musick and state policy, Valour in warr, in peace good husbandry, Sure lib'ral ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... book about the middle we should be disposed to set it down, on the strength of its latter half, as a contribution to the literature of the Pleasantonian (or blue-glass) school of natural philosophy. This impression would be humored by the bluish tint of the paper upon which it is printed. But an inspection of the entire work would show that it is something more comprehensive and ambitious, not to say more ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... state my dray did not upset this time, though the centre of gravity fell far without the base: what Newton says on that subject is erroneous; so are those illustrations of natural philosophy, in which a loaded dray is represented as necessarily about to fall, because a dotted line from the centre of gravity falls outside the wheels. It takes a great deal more to upset a well-loaded dray than one would have imagined, although sometimes the most unforeseen trifle ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... Society, but is thus stated by M. Thiebault in his "Recollections of Frederick the Great and the Court of Berlin." It is necessary to premise that M. Gleditsch, to whom the circumstance happened, was a botanist of eminence, holding the professorship of natural philosophy at Berlin, and respected as a man of an habitually serious, simple, and ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... while Herbert was prospering financially, he did not neglect the cultivation of his mind. Among the books left by Mr. Falkland were a number of standard histories, some elementary books in French, including a dictionary, a treatise on natural philosophy, and a German ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... measurable periods of time. And lastly, those subjects in which, as in astronomy, the phenomena take place beyond the control of student and teacher, and in which their repetition at pleasure is impossible, will not be considered. Natural philosophy, or physics, as this term is generally used, and chemistry, will, therefore, be the subjects which we will consider as sources from which to draw matter for lessons for the children ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... he was appointed Professor of Artillery Tactics and Natural Philosophy at the Virginia Military Institute. His success, for such he deemed it, was due to his own merit. One of his Mexican comrades, Major D.H. Hill, afterwards his brother-in-law, was a professor in a neighbouring institution, Washington ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... 1436, considered Nature, like Thomas Aquinas, from a mystical and scholastic point of view, as made up of living beings in a graduated scale from the lowest to the highest; and he lauded her in terms which even Pope Clement VII. thought exaggerated. Piety in him went hand in hand with a natural philosophy like Bacon's, and his interest in Nature was rather a matter of intellect ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... one's self from the "idiot laughter" they excite, and leave one no associations but grinning ones with one's romantic ideals. Her letters are very clever and make me laugh exceedingly, but I am sorry she has such a detestation of Mrs. Marcet and natural philosophy. As for her letters being shown about, I am not sorry that my indiscretion has relieved A—— from a restraint which, if it had only been disagreeable to her, would not have mattered so much, but which is calculated to destroy all possibility of free ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... part of the last century there lived a man of science, an eminent proficient in every branch of natural philosophy, who not long before our story opens had made experience of a spiritual affinity more attractive than any chemical one. He had left his laboratory to the care of an assistant, cleared his fine countenance from ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... other morning with another volume on birds, by Edwards, who has published four or five. The poor man, who is grown very old and devout, begs God to take from him the love of natural philosophy; and having observed some heterodox proceedings among bantam cocks, he proposes that all schools of girls and boys should be promiscuous, lest, if separated, they should learn wayward passions. But what struck me most were his dedications, the last was to God; this ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... the practical principles of natural philosophy, and yet how many intelligent persons remain ignorant of the most commonplace truths in this branch of learning! With a little attention to the natural and mechanical sciences, a new world of beauty ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... the scheme to his most intimate friends, Joseph Dalton Hooker, then Assistant Director of Kew, and John Tyndall, Professor of Natural Philosophy at the Royal Institution. George Busk, the anatomist, afterwards President of the College of Surgeons, was another whose friendship dated from soon after the return of the Rattlesnake to England. Herbert Spencer, the philosopher, and Sir John Lubbock, banker and naturalist, ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... the department of agriculture, of engraving and military tactics), a college of letters, preparatory department, law department, post-graduate course, last and certainly least, a female college. The faculty and board of instructors number twenty-one. The college of arts has nine professors, one of natural philosophy, one each of mental philosophy, modern languages, rhetoric, chemistry, mathematics, agriculture, and comparative anatomy, and a tutor. In the department of engineering is an officer of the United States Army. In the college of letters is the same faculty, with the addition of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... department of natural philosophy as my subject, I propose, by means of it, to illustrate the growth of scientific knowledge under the guidance of experiment. I wish, in the first place, to make you acquainted with certain elementary phenomena; ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... could well be wish'd; since he was fond of no Company, but such as were distinguish'd for Men of Sense. As he was well-grounded, in all the Sciences of the antient Chaldeans, he was no Stranger to those Principles of Natural Philosophy, which were then known: And understood as much of Metaphysics as any one in all Ages after him; that is to say, he knew little or nothing of the Matter. He was firmly convinc'd, that the Year consisted of 365 Days and an half, ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... his face in the cup, "pleno se proluit auro." And they had been obliged to resort to singing, always the refuge from the visible awkwardness of nothing to say. And here I cannot but remark, Eusebius, what dull things their songs must have been on natural philosophy, sun, moon, and stars—songs, Virgil tells you, edited by the old Astronomer-general Atlas. But as this was before the foundation of Rome, they had not that variety for their selection, which was as much in fashion afterwards in Rome as Moore's Melodies in England, as we ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... was compelled to take refuge in England at the revocation of the edict of Nantes, in 1685. Having laid the foundation of his mathematical studies in France, he prosecuted them further in London, where he read public lectures on natural philosophy for his support. The Principia mathematica of Sir Isaac Newton, which chance threw in his way, caused him to prosecute his studies with vigour, and he soon became distinguished among first-rate mathematicians. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... another's blood. He addressed to his daughter a few lines of graceful compliment, and, in striking contrast with Hamilton's injunction to his children, Burr's last request with regard to Theodosia is, that she shall acquire a "critical knowledge of Latin, English, and all branches of natural philosophy." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... pennies until I had collected a sufficient number to send to Erie and purchase a copy of Comstock's Natural Philosophy—the first one by the way that had ever been brought into our township—and these two books, together with my self-acquired knowledge, and my own experience of two years as a teacher, sufficed to fit me to enter the Fredonia Academy, ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... of whatsoever is combustible! Guard-rooms are burnt, Invalides mess-rooms. A distracted 'Peruke-maker with two fiery torches' is for burning 'the saltpetres of the Arsenal;'—had not a woman run screaming; had not a Patriot, with some tincture of Natural Philosophy, instantly struck the wind out of him (butt of musket on pit of stomach), overturned barrels, and stayed the devouring element. A young beautiful lady, seized escaping in these Outer Courts, and thought ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... the founding of Dartmouth, we find that, in Yale College, the Faculty consisted of Dr. Daggett, who was President, and Professor of Divinity; Rev. Nehemiah Strong, Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, and two ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... inferences from the above sources of information, I have endeavoured to keep closely to the rules of induction which have conducted to such signal discoveries in Natural Philosophy, and to refrain from accepting any inference which the Scriptural data did not justify. The modern advances in physical science, which have shown in what path we must proceed in order to reach a knowledge of ...
— An Essay on the Scriptural Doctrine of Immortality • James Challis
... them. I know nothing, I tell you. I am only an ignorant man. When I have the offer of completing, or rather of going over again, my knowledge of medicine, surgery, history, geography, botany, mineralogy, conchology, geodesy, chemistry, natural philosophy, mechanics, and hydrography, ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... metaphysics in the utmost contempt, and he scarcely attended at all to mathematics and natural philosophy, unless to turn them into ridicule. The studies which he chiefly followed were history and poetry, in which he made great progress; but to other branches of science he had given so very little application, that when he appeared as ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... only since the revival or new epoch of chymistry, that the learned have been occupied in researches on fermentation. I was the first who gave a new hint on this important part of natural philosophy, in 1785. It was then held as certain, that the saccharine substance was the principle of spirituous fermentation. A series of experiments enabled me to demonstrate the contrary, for I obtained a well crystallized sugar by the fermentation of a substance which ...
— The Art of Making Whiskey • Anthony Boucherie
... city, fairly furnished within, and bright in wall and battlement, yet noisome in places about the foundations. The other, born at Clermont, in Auvergne, under the shadow of the Puy de Dome, though taken to Paris at eight years old, retains for ever the impress of his birthplace; pursuing natural philosophy with the same zeal as Bacon, he returns to his own mountains to put himself under their tutelage, and by their help first discovers the great relations of the earth and the air: struck at last with mortal disease; gloomy, enthusiastic, and superstitious, with a conscience burning like ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... of man do either penetrate unto God, or are circumferred to nature, or are reflected or reverted upon himself. Out of which several inquiries there do arise three knowledges: divine philosophy, natural philosophy, and human philosophy or humanity. For all things are marked and stamped with this triple character, of the power of God, the difference of nature, ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... natural philosophy of man Wordsworth adds a mystic element, the result of his own belief that in every natural object there is a reflection of the living God. Nature is everywhere transfused and illumined by Spirit; man also is a reflection of the divine Spirit; and we shall never ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... understood the value of Science as a branch of general education. I observe, with the greatest satisfaction, that candidates for the degree of Master of Arts in this University are required to have a knowledge, not only of Mental and Moral Philosophy, and of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, but of Natural History, in addition to the ordinary Latin and Greek course; and that a candidate may take honours in these subjects ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... works shows very well his own interest and that of his generation in physical science of all kinds. There were eight treatises on Aristotle's physics and on the underlying principles of natural philosophy and of energy and of movement; four treatises concerning the heavens and the earth, one on physical geography which also contains, according to Pagel, numerous suggestions on ethnography and physiology. There are two treatises on generation ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... many of them of the first eminence, thirteen clergymen, most of whom are doctors of divinity, and connected with the literary institutions of America; among the remainder are two members of Congress, one professor of natural philosophy in a college, etc., etc." It seemed to be taken rather hardly by Mr. Perkins that the translators of the work which he edited, in citing the names of the advocates of the Metallic Practice, frequently omitted the honorary ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... it all the other day. I said: 'Do, my dear ladies, get rid of these childish notions, these uncivilised hankerings after marvels and magic, which make you the dupe of one charlatan after another. Take up science, for a change; study natural philosophy; try and acquire accurate notions of the system under which we live; realise that we are not moving on the stage of a Christmas pantomime, but in a universe governed by fixed laws, in which the miraculous ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... attended by a considerable number of students, to whom it did not, indeed, furnish what is called "the higher education," but it was a considerable advance upon any school that James had hitherto attended. English grammar, natural philosophy, arithmetic, and algebra—these were the principal studies to which James devoted himself, and they opened to him new fields of thought. Probably it was at this humble seminary that he first acquired the thirst for learning ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... Franklin's studies in natural philosophy are characterized by remarkable directness, patience, and inventiveness, absolute candor in seeking the truth, and a powerful scientific imagination. What has been usually considered his first discovery was the now ...
— Four American Leaders • Charles William Eliot
... Ganot's Natural Philosophy for General Readers and Young Persons; a Course of Physics divested of Mathematical Formulae and expressed in the language of daily life. Translated by E. ATKINSON, Ph. D. F.C.S. Fourth Edition, revised; with 2 Plates and 471 Woodcuts. ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... end of the Old Testament to the other as the solidity of iron. Those who take the Bible to be totidem verbis dictated by the God of Truth can refuse to believe it; and they make strange reasons. They undertake, a priori, to settle Divine intentions. The Holy Spirit did not mean to teach natural philosophy: this they know beforehand; or else they infer it from finding that the earth does move, and the Bible says it does not. Of course, ignorance apart, every word is truth, or the writer did not mean truth. But this puts the whole book on its trial: for we never can find out what the writer meant, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... a Welsh farmer was a poor pirate but a born soldier. He was described by one who knew him as being morose, sour, unsociable, and ill-tempered, and that he "knew as little of the sea or of ships as he did of the Arts of Natural Philosophy." But it is recorded to his credit that he was not cruel. He started life in a merchant ship bound for India, and was accidentally left behind in Madagascar. Taken care of by friendly natives, he fought so well on the side of his ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... against them, it was necessary for Hariot to pursue a delicate and cautious course, to eschew politics, statecraft and treason, and to devote himself to pure science (almost the only pure commodity that was then a safeguard) metaphysics, natural philosophy, mathematics, history, and literature. He was their jackal, their book of reference, their guide, their teacher, and ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... Pterodactyle, the outer or "little" finger alone is lengthened, and the other four fingers left free—one of those strange instances in nature of the same effect being produced in widely different plants and animals, and yet by slightly different means, on which a whole chapter of natural philosophy—say, rather, natural theology—will have to be written ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley
... seem to them, essential to their religion; they only left untouched the most rigid article of faith. Their intellectual successors, being taught by them how to make use of science and reason, employed them against whatever beliefs remained. Thus rational theology engendered natural philosophy. ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... to talk of natural philosophy. "That woodcocks," said he, "fly over the northern countries is proved, because they have been observed at sea. Swallows certainly sleep all the winter. A number of them conglobulate together by flying round and round, and ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... remarked, it creates the same grand ideas respecting this world which Astronomy does for the Universe." In this passage Darwin doubtless refers to a remark of Sir John Herschel's in his admirable "Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy,"—a book which exercised a most remarkable and beneficial influence on the mind of the ...
— Volcanic Islands • Charles Darwin
... second first. It is the objection of the sentimentalist; and, ridiculous as the mode of discussion appears when applied to the laws of natural philosophy, the sociologist is constantly met by objections of just that character. Especially when the subject under discussion is charity in any of its public forms, the attempt to bring method and clearness into the discussion is sure to be crossed by suggestions which are as far from the point ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner
... writing an exact man. And therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not. Histories make men wise, poets witty, the mathematics subtle, natural philosophy deep, moral grave, logic and rhetoric able to contend: Abeunt studia in mores. Nay, there is no stond or impediment in the wit, but may be wrought {19} out by fit studies: like as diseases of the body may have appropriate exercises. ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... world and the denial of immortality. The result was an outbreak of heretical speculation along pantheistic lines. Swift steps were taken: the heretics were hunted down, and in 1209 the Council of Paris forbade the study of Aristotle's own works or those of his commentators which dealt with natural philosophy; while in 1215 the statutes of the University renewed the prohibition. But such prohibition did not include any of the logical works; and in 1231 a bull of Gregory IX only excepted any of Aristotle's works until they had been examined and purged of all heresy. ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... child who is to understand the definition? All that a prudent person will attempt, is to give instances of different virtues; but even these, it will be difficult properly to select for a child. General terms, whether in morals or in natural philosophy, should, we apprehend, be as much as possible avoided in early education. Some people may imagine that children have improved in virtue and wisdom, when they can talk fluently of justice, and charity, and humanity; ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... invented by the priests and wise men of old for the improvement and government of society, as designed to give authority to laws, and maintain social order.[155] Others have regarded them as intended to be allegorical interpretations of physical phenomena—the poetic embodiment of the natural philosophy of the primitive races of men;[156] whilst others have looked upon them as historical legends, having a substratum of fact, and, when stripped of the supernatural and miraculous drapery which accompanies fable, as containing ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... remains to call attention again to the fact that this conception of the discontinuity of energy, the acceptance of which Poincare says would be "the most profound revolution that natural philosophy has undergone since Newton" was suggested by the present writer fifteen years ago. Its reception and serious consideration by one of the first mathematical physicists of the world seems a sufficient justification of its suggestion then ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... orbs about us being inhabited or no. Whewell's book is called, "On the Plurality of Worlds;" Brewster's, "More Worlds than One." I shouldn't wonder if you know all about them. They bring together a vast number of points of great interest in natural philosophy, and some very curious reasoning on both sides, and leave the matter ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... contributed greatly. It is to be regretted that one who had brought that branch of science to such perfection should have been so ungenerous as to ignore the assistance he had received from the researches of Dr. Young. When the Royal Institution was first established, Dr. Young lectured on natural philosophy. He proved the undulatory theory of light by direct experiment, but as it depended upon the hypothesis of an ethereal medium, it was not received in England, the more so as it was contrary to Newton's theory. The French savants afterwards did Young ample justice. The existence of the ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... which we live, that considerable portions of these heavenly bodies are now known to have descended to the earth. An event so wonderful and unexpected was at first received with incredulity and ridicule; but we may now venture to consider the fact as well established as any other hypothesis of natural philosophy, which does not actually admit of mathematical demonstration. The attention of our philosophers was first called to this subject by the falling of one of these masses of matter near Flamborough Head, in Yorkshire; it weighed about 50 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 350, January 3, 1829 • Various
... (1781-1858), father of Judge J. I. C. Hare, who was professor of chemistry and natural philosophy in William and Mary College, and, later, professor of chemistry in the University of Pennsylvania, published a number of moral essays in the Port Folio under the pen-name ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... flower; relation, sympathy, stirring in every vein. And what is that root? Is not that the soul of his soul?—A thought too bold?—A dream too wild? Yet when this spiritual light shall have revealed the law of more earthly natures,—when he has learned to worship the soul, and to see that the natural philosophy that now is, is only the first gropings of its gigantic hand,—he shall look forward to an ever-expanding knowledge as to a becoming creator.[13] He shall see that nature is the opposite of the soul, answering to it part for part. One is seal and one is print. Its ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... far less labor than is usually requisite. At ten years of age I was as familiar with Lindley Murray's Grammar as with the Westminster Catechism; and the latter I had to repeat every Sunday. My favorite studies were Natural Philosophy, Logic, and Moral Science. From my brother Albert I received lessons in the ancient tongues, Hebrew, Greek, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... consider by what means we, the University of Cambridge, may, as a living body, appropriate and vitalise this new organ, the outward shell of which we expect soon to rise before us. The course of study at this University has always included Natural Philosophy, as well as Pure Mathematics. To diffuse a sound knowledge of Physics, and to imbue the minds of our students with correct dynamical principles, have been long regarded as among our highest functions, and very few ...
— Five of Maxwell's Papers • James Clerk Maxwell
... certain that a great mistake has been made,—that British popular geology at the present time is in direct opposition to the principles of Natural Philosophy."[39] ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... the governor to call up Descartes and Gassendi, with whom I prevailed to explain their systems to Aristotle. This great philosopher freely acknowledged his own mistakes in natural philosophy, because he proceeded in many things upon conjecture, as all men must do; and he found that Gassendi, who had made the doctrine of Epicurus as palatable as he could, and the vortices of Descartes, were equally to be exploded. He predicted the same fate to attraction, whereof the present learned ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... I meditated upon these the more intense grew the interest which had been excited within me. The limited nature of my education in general, and more especially my ignorance on subjects connected with natural philosophy, so far from rendering me diffident of my own ability to comprehend what I had read, or inducing me to mistrust the many vague notions which had arisen in consequence, merely served as a farther stimulus to imagination; and I was vain enough, or perhaps reasonable enough, to doubt whether ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... I could have talked about it at least three hours. The Pope was entertained to such a degree that he forgot the annoyance of the Marquis standing there. I seasoned what I had to say with that part of natural philosophy which belongs to our profession; and so having spoken for near upon an hour, the Marquis grew tired of waiting, and went off fuming. Then the Pope bestowed on me the most familiar caresses which can be imagined, ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... of old Mrs. Robison, widow of the eminent professor of natural philosophy, and who entertained an inveterate dislike to everything which she thought savoured of cant. She had invited a gentleman to dinner on a particular day, and he had accepted, with the reservation, "If I am spared."—"Weel, weel," ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... much time to scientific experiments and natural philosophy, and constructed a variety of odd mechanisms, including an automatic dragon and a self-playing lyre.[264:1] Moreover, he was a believer in mystical faith-cures, and in the existence of a kind of dualism in therapeutics, ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... Staffordshire assizes, a year or two ago, such a host of witnesses, who firmly believed in witchcraft, and swore to their belief in spectre dogs and wizards, as to show that, in the Midland counties at least, such traditions are anything but extinct. If so much of the bad has been spared by steam, by natural philosophy, and by the Church, let us hope that some of the good may still linger along with it, and that an English Grimm may yet arise who may carry out what Mr. Chambers has so well begun in Scotland, and discover in the mouth of an Anglo- Saxon Gammer Grethel, some, at least, of those ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... which animal existence appears to our unassisted senses, than may be discovered in the leaves of every forest, in the flowers of every garden, and in the waters of every rivulet, by that noblest instrument of natural philosophy, the Microscope. ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... of the greatest of the great, this is pre-eminently the case. One reader looks for simply dramatic interest, another for natural philosophy, and a third for morals, and each is more than satisfied with the treatment ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... talents lay in the line of natural philosophy and mechanics, passed with brilliant success through the Boston English High School. He won the first medals, and felt all that pride and enthusiasm which belong to a successful student. He entered the Latin Classical School. With a large philosophic and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... part of the philosophy of Aristotle has come slowly into the use of the Latins. For his Natural Philosophy and Metaphysics, and the Commentaries of Averrhoes and of others, were translated in our times, and were excommunicated at Paris before the year of our Lord 1237 on account of [their heretical views on] the eternity ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton
... changing perturbations. To discover a few of these perturbations, and to assign their nature and in a few rare cases their numerical value, was the object which Newton proposed to himself in writing his famous book, the 'Principia Mathematica Philosophiae Naturalis' [Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy], Notwithstanding the incomparable sagacity of its author, the 'Principia' contained merely a rough outline of planetary perturbations, though not through any lack of ardor or perseverance. The efforts of the great philosopher were always superhuman, and the questions which he ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... through the whole of Livy, Sallust, and Tacitus. I had studied the most celebrated orations of Cicero, and translated a great deal of Homer. Terence, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, and Juvenal, I had read over and over again." He also studied geography, natural history, and natural philosophy, and obtained a considerable acquaintance with general knowledge. At sixteen he was articled to a clerk in Chancery; worked hard; was admitted to the bar; and his industry and perseverance ensured success. He became Solicitor- General under the Fox administration in 1806, ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... assertion of Scripture or creed. Shall they, then, deny it altogether because the materialistic band clamor that it is a delusion, and they themselves see no sufficient evidence for it? There is a more appropriate alternative. Many theories in natural philosophy have been exploded by the proof of their absurdity, and the correct explanations are accepted on trust by the multitudes incompetent to master their logical and mathematical grounds. Very few understand the proofs of the chief laws of nature, but the vast majority of men implicitly trust ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... in winter for several years. I had acquired a great fondness for reading, devouring everything in the way of books I could lay my hands upon. Especially I had a great passion for history, biography, geography, natural philosophy, and the like, and I let nothing escape me that the country afforded. I had no money to buy books, and had to depend on borrowing them. I soon went through arithmetic, grammar, and the history of the ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... surface to the wings. It is a fact, however, that kites, and hawks are often seen to continue suspended in the air several minutes without any apparent motion of the wings; but by what law or theory the feat is accomplished, natural philosophy has ventured no other conjecture than that the bird is endowed with the faculty of suspending occasionally its ordinary subjection to the laws of gravity. If any observing theorist will give any more rational conjecture on the subject, we should be glad ...
— Scientific American magazine, Vol. 2 Issue 1 • Various
... of family life; for "children knew only their mothers and not their fathers." Fu-hi introduced matrimony; and in so doing he placed man as the husband at the head of the family and abolished the original matriarchate. This quite corresponds with his views on the dualism in natural philosophy, of which he is supposed to have laid the germs by the invention of the so-called pa-kua, eight symbols, each consisting of three parallel lines, broken or continuous. The continuous lines represented the male element in nature; the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... called the "School for Poor Children." In this school the classes are held in the evening. They comprise reading, writing, arithmetic, grammar, physical geography, Greek history, and elements of natural philosophy and chemistry. It is an interesting sight to see attending these lessons each evening a number of orphan children, who, by means of a suitable education, will one day be good citizens and useful members of society, whose enemies ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... that either of us can give," said Beauclerc; "in my opinion it is the finest view of the progress of natural philosophy, the most enlarged, the most just in its judgments of the past, and in its prescience of the future; in the richness of experimental knowledge, in its theoretic invention, the greatest work by any one individual ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth |
