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Impelled towards the hypothesis of the transmutation of species, partly by his general cosmological and geological views; partly by the conception of a graduated, though irregularly branching, scale of being, which had arisen out of his profound study of plants and of the lower forms of animal life, Lamarck, whose general line of thought often closely resembles that of De Maillet, made a great advance upon the crude and merely speculative manner in which that writer deals with the question of the origin of living beings, by endeavouring to find physical causes competent to effect that change of one species into another, which De Maillet had only supposed to occur.

In the one case it is necessary to find other members of the series, in the other it is necessary to inquire for others, inasmuch as experience presents no absolute limitation of the regress. These remarks will be placed in their proper light by their application in the following section. SECTION IX. Of the Empirical Use of the Regulative Principle of Reason with regard to the Cosmological Ideas.

The gusts of this peculiar storm in the middle of the dry season seemed to be attempts at conveying meaning, ineffable sounds from without transforming to thought that smote recriminations within, and this he listened to as well even as he smiled wryly to think how superstitious he was to attempt to augur some cosmological significance to his petty existence from adventitious happenings.

I could do with them, for the civilizations about me, what no one else could. Too, I was actuated by selfish motives. I loved my telescopes and my isodermic super-spectroscopes. And there was still much work I had to do! Already I had discovered three new elements, and that had showed me I was but at the beginning of a knowledge of cosmological chemistry. Forbes!

The names of the zikkurats at Erech and Borsippa, 'the house of seven zones' and 'the house of the seven divisions of heaven and earth, respectively, while conveying, as we saw, cosmological conceptions of a more specific character, may still be reckoned in the class of names that embody the leading purpose of the tower in Babylonia, as may also a name like E-temen-an-ki, 'the foundation stone of heaven and earth, assigned to the zikkurat to Marduk in Babylonia.

Upon this perfectly natural but not on that account reliable inference does the cosmological argument rest. But, let me form any conception whatever of a thing, I find that I cannot cogitate the existence of the thing as absolutely necessary, and that nothing prevents me be the thing or being what it may from cogitating its non-existence.

The waters flowed freely and yet not without limitation. The contest with Tiâmat is not referred to in this second version, and this may be taken as an indication that the 'nature' myth was not an ingredient part of cosmological speculations, but only introduced into the first version because of its associations with Marduk.

This cosmological theory which we may deduce from the fragment of the first tablet of the creation series is confirmed by the accounts that have come down to us chiefly through Damascius of the treatment of the subject by Berosus. Damascius explicitly places the Babylonians among those nations who fail to carry back the universe to an ultimate single source.

He speaks of these symbolic meanings as the "secrets," and so we have the secret of the Garden, of the rivers, of the coats. And in the same way he speaks of the secret of the Cherubim, of the ark and the Tabernacle. These objects also symbolize metaphysical and cosmological truths.

To each of these gods one story was supposed to be dedicated, and the tower thus became a cosmological symbol, elaborating in theological fashion the fundamental idea of the zikkurat as a reproduction of the dwelling-place of the gods. The identification of the five gods with the planets is a proof of the scholastic character of the interpretation, and hence of its comparatively late origin.