Problem of life and motion / [by] an exile.

  • Vanderburgh, Federal, 1788-1868.
Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Problem of life and motion / [by] an exile. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

    16/146
    PROPOSITION. This proposition lias not been proved, and yet by the overshadowing authority of his great name, it is believed, and has finally resulted in the conviction that motion is not an essential attribute of matter. In this we agree, that it is not an essential attribute of matter. The elements of matter are properties held in common with all forms of organic life, and pre- suppose a force which made them together with all material bodies in nature. Force gives to matter its form, and the forming law being the sustaining power of all things, makes motion an essential ele- ment in matter. We risk nothing in these specula- tions. We are abroad in the field, an apprentice philosopher, gleaning what we can from the labyrinth of science to bring home the fragments to our labora- tory of life, and without stating any formal proposi- tion to foreshadow our o]oinions, we frame this for our motto: Sit atomus, sit homo, sit orbis, sit systema solare, omnia materialia in natura moventur vi eadem sequabili moli rnovendae.— All material bodies in nature are moved by the same force propor- tioned to the mass to be moved, whether it be an atom, a man, a globe, or a solar system. If it be found that the atom, the man, the globe and the solar system, are each made in centres of circum- ference by one law, and the sum of attraction, in the circumference of each group of relations, be equal to