Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative; Vol. 2 of 3: Library Edition (1891), Containing Seven Essays not before Republished, and Various other Additions.Spencer, Herbert
Philosophy
Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative; Vol. 2 of 3: Library Edition (1891), Containing Seven Essays not before Republished, and Various other Additions.
Spencer, Herbert
Philosophy; Political science; Science
Astronomy deals with bodies that have their several proper names, or
(as with the smaller stars) are registered by their positions, and
considers each of them as a distinct individual—as Geology, while dimly
perceiving in the Moon and nearest planets other groups of geological
phenomena (which it would deal with as independent wholes, did not
distance forbid), occupies itself with that individualized group
presented by the Earth; so Biology treats either of an individual
distinguished from all others, or of parts or products belonging to
such an individual, or of structural or functional traits common to
many such individuals that have been observed, and supposed to be
common to others that are like them in most or all of their attributes.
Every biological truth connotes a specifically individualized object,
or a number of specifically individualized objects of the same kind,
or numbers of different kinds that are severally specific. See, then,
the contrast. {111} The truths of the Abstract-Concrete Sciences do
not imply specific individuality. Neither Molar Physics, nor Molecular
Physics, nor Chemistry, concerns itself with this. The laws of motion
are expressed without any reference whatever to the sizes or shapes
of the moving masses; which may be taken indifferently to be suns or
atoms. The relations between contraction and the escape of molecular
motion, and between expansion and the absorption of molecular motion,
are expressed in their general forms without reference to the kind
of matter; and, if the degree of either that occurs in a particular
kind of matter is formulated, no note is taken of the quantity of that
matter, much less of its individuality. Similarly with Chemistry.
When it inquires into the atomic weight, the molecular structure, the
atomicity, the combining proportions, etc., of a substance, it is
indifferent whether a grain or a ton be thought of—the conception of
amount is absolutely irrelevant. And so with more special attributes.
Sulphur, considered chemically, is not sulphur under its crystalline
form, or under its allotropic viscid form, or as a liquid, or as a gas;
but it is sulphur considered apart from those attributes of quantity,
and shape, and state, that give individuality.
Prof. Bain objects to the division I have drawn between the Concrete
Science of Astronomy and that Abstract-Concrete Science which deals
with the mutually-modified motions of hypothetical masses in space, as
“not a little arbitrary.” He says:―
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