The concepts and theories of modern physics / By J.B. Stallo.

  • John Stallo
Date:
1900
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The concepts and theories of modern physics / By J.B. Stallo. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    320/376 (page 270)
    CHAPTER XY. COSMOLOGICAL AND COSMOGENETIC SPECULATIONS, THE NEBULAE HYPOTHESIS. Like all metaphysical theories, the atomo-mechanical theory has its cosmogonies. All metaphysical cosmog- onies are attempts to deduce the universe and its phe- nomena from one or more primordial elements by the application of a few general principles. The cosmogo- nies of the atomo-mechanical theory are attempts to deduce the universe and its phenomena from the ele- ments of mass and motion by the application of mechan- ical principles expressive of the simple laws of motion. As has been shown, the ultimate problem of the atomo- mechanical theory, to whose effectual and complete so- lution the physicists of the day look forward with a greater or less degree of confidence—though many of them are clear-sighted enough to regard it as an aspira- tion never to be realized—is the exhibition of all vital and organic phenomena as results of ordinary chemical and physical action, and of chemical and physical action, in turn, as exchanges and transferences of mechanical motion between constant and uniform elements of mass. A question necessarily preliminary to cosmological speculations of whatever kind has been extensively mooted, of late, by mathematicians and physicists alike —the question respecting the finitude or infinitude of