The correlation of physical forces: being the substance of a course of lectures delivered in the London Institution, in the year 1843 / by W.R. Grove.

  • Grove, W. R. (William Robert), 1811-1896.
Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The correlation of physical forces: being the substance of a course of lectures delivered in the London Institution, in the year 1843 / by W.R. Grove. 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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    CORRELATION OF PHYSICAL FORCES. When natural phenomena are for the first time observed, a tendency immediately developes itself to refer them to some- thing previously known,—to bring them within the range of acknowledged sequences. The mode of regarding new facts, which is most favourably received by the public, is that which refers them to recognised views,—stamps them into the mould in which the mind has been already shaped. The new fact may be far removed from those to which it is referred, and may belong to a different order of analogies, but this cannot then be known, as its co-ordinates are wanting. It may be questionable whether the mind is not so moulded by past events that it is impossible to advance an entirely new view, but, admitting such pos- sibility, the new view, necessarily founded on insufficient data, is likely to be more incorrect and prejudicial than even a strained attempt to reconcile * the new discovery with known facts. The theory consequent upon new facts, whether it be a co-ordination of them with known ones, or the more difficult and dangerous attempt at remodelling the public ideas, is generally enunciated by the discoverers themselves of the facts, or by those to whose authority the world at that B