Essays and addresses / by professors and lectures of the Owens College, Manchester.

Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Essays and addresses / by professors and lectures of the Owens College, Manchester. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    118/584 page 97
    nr.] SOZAÄ PHYSICS. 97 yet wish to indicate what is conceived to be the true position of physical science with regard to it. 40. In the first place, it is very difficult to separate the physicist from the man. I see one man shoot another, but what do I see as a physicist ? Why, first of all, I recognise a conversion of the energy of the gunpowder into the visible energy of the bullet ; going back a little further, I trace the bestowal by means of the forefinger of a certain amount of energy upon the trigger ; going back a little further, I know that this bestowal of energy denotes a certain consumption of muscular fibre, and also a certain minute change in the matter of the brain. Thus, as a physicist, I can only arrive at a physical antecedent,—nay, even the hideously triumphant face and glaring eye of the murderer have from this point of view none but physical antecedents. But yet I know as a man that the act was a foul murder, and will do my very best to bring the murderer to justice, whatever be my ideas with respect to the position of life in the Universe of Energy. Thus, as a physicist, I recog¬ nise the delicacy of construction which appears to be necessary to the embodiment of intelligence, but I cannot tell whether intelligence be there or not. My reasons for believing that it is there have nothing to do with physical science ; they are derived from the consciousness that I myself exist, and from the con¬ viction derived from powerful reasons of an analogical nature that my fellow men are beings similar to myself. 41. But, again, when we regard the varied motions of an animated being, we find that these are of two kinds :—some are as nearly as possible mechanical, H
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