Physico-physiological researches on the dynamics of magnetism, electricity, heat, light, crystallization, and chemism, in their relations to vital force / by Baron Charles Von Reichenbach; with the addition of a preface and critical notes by John Ashburner.

  • Carl Reichenbach
Date:
1850
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Physico-physiological researches on the dynamics of magnetism, electricity, heat, light, crystallization, and chemism, in their relations to vital force / by Baron Charles Von Reichenbach; with the addition of a preface and critical notes by John Ashburner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    but while in passing we reply to objectors, we must continue to illustrate the leading purpose of these researches, really turies for the light of the more remote objects to reach us; that light arriving successively from each according to the distance. 2. Our case refers to objects which, though self-luminous, are not visible to the naked eye. They may * blush out/ even frequently ; but men are not capable of being their observers. Only a few of mankind can enjoy, and be qualified to use, such telescopes as those of Sir William Herschel, and his still more accomplished son. 3. Granting the possession of these advantages, the opportunities for observation are too scanty for the construction of a negative argument. Sir William Herschel, in the same paper, says that the number of night-hours, suited to this kind of celestial observation, is averaged favourably in our climate at one hundred in a year; and that to ‘ sweep ’—to examine as rapidly as is consistent with astronomical attention—every zone of the heavens, for the two hemispheres, would require eight hundred and eleven of such favourable years. The num- ber of the objects to be observed is great almost beyond conception. Sir William Herschel, by counting the stars in a definite portion of the field of view which he observed in one hour, and estimating the rest, concluded that fifty thousand passed under his review in that hour. It is therefore within the scope of probability that new masses of light are achieving their first arrival in parts of our telescopic sphere, fre- quently, without its being possible for men to be aware of it; and, when any of them comes to be discovered, the date of their arrival is unknown. I draw no argument from the fact that, within the short period of the last two or three centuries, stars have been discovered which earlier catalogues or descriptions had not noticed. The attention, requisite to give certainty in this matter, we cannot assume to have been exercised; and to look for evidence from this quarter would be forgetting that it can exist in the domain of only the greatest telescopic powers. These views of the antiquity of that vast portion of the Creator’s works which astronomy discloses, may well abate our reluctance to ad- mit the deductions of geology, concerning the past ages of our planets’ existence.—[Supplementary note to the relation between the Holy Scriptures and some parts of Geological Science. By Dr. Pye Smith.] Nor ought it to be forgotten that these very principles and deduc- tions of geology, that have excited so much of alarm and opposition among some friends of religion, and so much of premature and ground-