Address delivered before the British Association assembled at Belfast — John Shaqi
Address delivered before the British Association assembled at BelfastTyndall, John
Religion
Address delivered before the British Association assembled at Belfast
Tyndall, John
Evolution; Religion and science; Science -- History
physicists as to the acceptance of so-called _à priori_ truths.
Aristotle's errors of detail, as shown by Eucken and Lange, were
grave and numerous. He affirmed that only in man we had the beating
of the heart, that the left side of the body was colder than the
right, that men have more teeth than women, and that there is an
empty space at the back of every man's head.
There is one essential quality in physical conceptions which was
entirely wanting in those of Aristotle and his followers. I wish it
could be expressed by a word untainted by its associations; it
signifies a capability of being placed as a coherent picture before
the mind. The Germans express the act of picturing by the word
_vorstellen_, and the picture they call a _Vorstellung_. We have no
word in English which comes nearer to our requirements than
_Imagination_, and, taken with its proper limitations, the word
answers very well; but, as just intimated, it is tainted by its
associations, and therefore objectionable to some minds. Compare,
with reference to this capacity of mental presentation, the case of
the Aristotelian who refers the ascent of water in a pump to Nature's
abhorrence of a vacuum, with that of Pascal when he proposed to solve
the question of atmospheric pressure by the ascent of the Puy de
Dome. In the one case the terms of the explanation refuse to fall
into place as a physical image; in the other the image is distinct,
the fall and rise of the barometer being clearly figured as the
balancing of two varying and opposing pressures.
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