Paradoxical philosophy : a sequel to the Unseen universe.

  • Balfour Stewart
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Paradoxical philosophy : a sequel to the Unseen universe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    alone. We can trace the steel back in thought to the time when it was extracted as ore of iron from the mine, or possibly when it was cut from a lump of meteoric iron, and by a number of artificial processes reduced to its present form and properties. We go still farther back and picture to ourselves the materials of which the earth is com- posed, gradually condensing together from what it is common to call a ‘ nebulous ’ state, cooling through long ages, and finally arriving at the disposition in which we find them now; and we can see in thought an outlying straggler of the same or of another nebulous mass, under the action of ordinary gravitation, assuming an orbit which, after millions of years, leads to its encountering the earth and forming a compara- tively recent addition to its mass. All this, however, is familiar to every one of us from quite recent discussions, so that I need not enlarge on it. This is, in fact, the origin and growth of worlds, with their satellites and their primary, so far as we yet know them. But
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