Selections From The First Annual Conference For The History Of Philosophy Of Science

Author : Will Whewell
Publisher : Theclassics.Us
ISBN 13 : 9781230389066
Total Pages : 236 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (89 download)

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Download or read book The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, Founded Upon Their History Volume 1 written by Will Whewell and published by Theclassics.Us. This book was released on 2013-09 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1847 edition. Excerpt: ... of some great past event, or series of events, of a striking and definite kind; his antagonist is at every step explaining away the evidence, and showing that it proves nothing. One geologist adduces his proofs of a vast universal deluge: but another endeavours to show that the proofs do not establish either the universality or the vastness of such an event. The inclined broken edges of a certain formation, covered with their own fragments, beneath superjacent horizontal deposits, are at one time supposed to prove a catastrophic breaking up of the earlier strata; but this opinion is controverted by showing that the same formations, when pursued into other countries, exhibit a uniform gradation from the lower to the upper, with no trace of violence. Extensive and lofty elevations of the coast, continents of igneous rock, at first appear to indicate operations far more gigantic than those which now occur; but attempts are soon made to show that time only is wanting to enable the present age to rival the past in the production of such changes. Each new fact adduced by the catastrophist is at first striking and apparently convincing; but as it becomes familiar, it strikes the imagination less powerfully; and the uniformitarian, constantly labouring to produce some imitation of it by the machinery which he has so well studied, at last in every case seems to himself to succeed, so far as to destroy the effect of his opponent's evidence. This is so with regard to more remote, as well as with regard to immediate evidences of change. When it is ascertained that in every part of the earth's crust the temperature increases as we descend below the surface, at first this fact seems to indicate a central heat: and a central heat naturally suggests an...