Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 7, 2025
It occupied him for thirteen months, and appeared in November, 1859, under the title "On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle of Life." It is doubtful if any single book, except the "Principia," ever worked so great and so rapid a revolution in science, or made so deep an impression on the general mind.
Speaking to us once in private upon the necessity of persevering effort in order to any kind of success in life, he said, "When I was a student, I resolved to make myself master of Newton's 'Principia, and although I had not at that time knowledge enough of mathematics to make the task other than a Hercules-labor to me, yet I read and wrought unceasingly, through all obstructions and difficulties, until I had accomplished it; and no Tamerlane conqueror ever felt half so happy as I did when the terrible book lay subdued and vanquished before me."
None of Kepler's contemporaries believed the law of the areas, nor was it accepted until the publication of the "Principia" of Newton. In fact, no one in those times understood the philosophical meaning of Kepler's laws. He himself did not foresee what they must inevitably lead to. His mistakes showed how far he was from perceiving their result.
He invented the infinitesimal calculus which is more suited for such calculations, but had he expressed his results in that language he would have been unintelligible to many. Newton's method of calculating the precession of the equinoxes, already referred to, is as beautiful as anything in the Principia.
But I observe that it is no part of the plan of those charming papers, more than it was of the "Novum Organon" or of the "Principia," to descend into the details of the economies. I suppose that the author left all that to the "Domestic Economy" of her excellent sister, and, as far as the details of practice go, well she might.
And upon this mode of approach, the pleadings about the title, or right to teach at all, taking precedency of the pleadings about the particular things taught, would be the principia, or beginning of the whole process, and so far would be entitled by preference to the name of principles.
Plans and specifications showing its extent and magnificence have been continually before the board for the last month; and in such repute have been a smashed door-sill or an old arch, that freshmen have now abandoned conic sections for crowbars, and instead of the "Principia" have taken up the pickaxe.
The quality of culture in that simple but refined home, as well as the intellectual character of this youth without schooling, may be inferred from the fact that before he had reached the age of twelve he had read, with his mother's help, Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Hume's History of England, Sears' History of the World, Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, and the Dictionary of Sciences; and had even attempted to struggle through Newton's Principia, whose mathematics were decidedly beyond both teacher and student.
His treatise on Optics and his Principia, in which he brought to light the new theory of the universe, place him at the head of modern philosophers on a high vantage ground, to which none have been elevated, of his age, with the exception of Leibnitz and Galileo.
As a literary philosopher, Bacon surpasses Newton; as an experimental philosopher, Newton surpasses Bacon. Newton's works contain nothing in point of style and illustration comparable to Bacon's essays; Bacon's works contain nothing in point of scientific discovery and mathematical calculation comparable to Newton's "Optics" and "Principia."
Word Of The Day
Others Looking