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The love of universal knowledge that filled his mind, would not allow him to neglect one branch of science, of which neither he nor the world could yet see the absurdity. He made ample amends for his time lost in this pursuit by his knowledge in physics and his acquaintance with astronomy.
The artificial memory-systems, recommending, as they do, such irrational methods of thinking, are only to be recommended for the first landmarks in a system, or for such purely detached facts as enjoy no rational connection with the rest of our ideas. Thus the student of physics may remember the order of the spectral colours by the word vibgyor which their initial letters make.
Now interested in mathematics, now in philosophy, presently absorbed in physics or in the proof of man's existence, throughout his whole career he held fast to the faith that science depends not upon the authority of books but upon the observation of facts. "Here are my books," he told a visitor, as he pointed to a basket of rabbits that he was about to dissect.
He professed that his own chief wisdom consisted in the knowledge of his own ignorance, and dissuaded his friends from the cultivation of mathematics and physics, since he affirmed that the former leads to vain conclusions, the latter to atheism.
But one can scarcely carry them on without having a good knowledge of certain sciences not commonly supposed to be closely related to psychology at all. Thus, one should be trained in chemistry and physics and physiology, and should have a working knowledge of laboratory methods. Moreover, it is desirable to have a sufficient knowledge of mathematics to enable one to handle experimental data.
But it is inferred approximately by means of the appearances we can observe. It then turns out that these appearances can be exhibited by physics as a function of the matter in our immediate neighbourhood; e.g. the visual appearance of a distant object is a function of the light-waves that reach the eyes. This leads to confusions of thought, but offers no real difficulty.
This discovery was a shattering blow to the old theory that had dominated that field of physics for so many centuries. It was completely revolutionary to prove that, instead of a mysterious something within the tube being responsible for the suspension of liquids at certain heights, it was simply the ordinary atmospheric pressure mysterious enough, it is true pushing upon them from without.
There is but one path the plain, truth-lighted, onward path to victory and to peace. Substance and Shadow: or, Morality and Religion in their Relation to Life. An Essay on the Physics of Creation. By HENRY JAMES. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.
It was a rare and fortunate thing, too, that any one with the mathematical gift should have been taken by these curiosities. Section 8 And while the boy Holsten was mooning over his fireflies at Fiesole, a certain professor of physics named Rufus was giving a course of afternoon lectures upon Radium and Radio-Activity in Edinburgh.
Now what is it but the preposterous condition of ordinary school education which prevents a young man of seventeen, destined for the practice of medicine, from being fully prepared for the study of nature; and from coming to the medical school, equipped with that preliminary knowledge of the principles of Physics, of Chemistry, and of Biology, upon which he has now to waste one of the precious years, every moment of which ought to be given to those studies which bear directly upon the knowledge of his profession?
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