Life and Matter: A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's "Riddle of the Universe"Lodge, Oliver, Sir
Religion
Life and Matter: A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's "Riddle of the Universe"
Lodge, Oliver, Sir
Haeckel, Ernst, 1834-1919. Welträthsel; Life -- Origin; Monism; Philosophy and religion
Guidance of _matter_ can be affected by a passive exertion of force
without doing work; as a quiescent rail can guide a train to its
destination, provided an active engine propels it. But the analogy of
the rail must not be pressed: the rail "guides" by exerting force
perpendicular to the direction of motion, it does no work but it
sustains an equal opposite reaction.[5] The guidance exercised by life
or mind is managed in an unknown but certainly different fashion:
"determination" can sustain no reaction—if it could it would be a
straightforward mechanical agent—but it can utilise the mechanical
properties both of rail and of engine; it arranged for the rail to be
placed in position so that the lateral force thereby exerted should
guide all future trains to a desired destination, and it further took
steps to design and compose locomotives of sufficient power, and to
start them at a prearranged time. It "employs" mechanical stress, as a
capitalist employs a labourer, not doing anything itself, but directing
the operations. It is impossible to explain all this fully by the laws
of mechanics alone, that is to say, no mechanical analysis can be
complete and all-embracing, though the whole procedure is fully subject
to those laws.
[Footnote 5: It is well to bear in mind the distinction between
"force" and "energy." These terms have been so popularly confused
that it may be difficult always to discriminate them, but in
Physics they are absolutely discriminated. We have a direct sense
of "force," in our muscles, whether they be moving or at rest. A
force in motion is a "power," it "does work" and transfers energy
from one body to another, which is commonly though incorrectly
spoken of as "generating" energy. But a force at rest—a mere
statical stress, like that exerted by a pillar or a watershed—does
no work, and "generates" or transfers no energy; yet the one
sustains a roof which would otherwise fall, thereby screening a
portion of ground from vegetation; while the other deflects a
rain-drop into the Danube or the Rhine. This latter is the kind
of force which constrains a stone to revolve in a circle instead
of a straight line; a force like that of a groove or slot or
channel or "guide."]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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