Religion and Science as Allies, Or, Similarities of Physical and Religious Knowledge |
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absolute accept antagonism astronomy atoms Auguste Comte believe body cause cern chemical Christianity Church claim conceivable conception consciousness Dean of Canterbury Descartes divine doctrines earth ence equal ether evidence existence experience external fact faith finite force Fragments of Science gion give gravitation heat Herbert Spencer human Huxley hypotheses idea immaterial inconceivable induction infallible inference infinite infinity inquiry intuitive Jevons John Stuart Mill knowl knowledge laws light ligion limit magnet material matter ment mental metaphysical method microscope mind molecule moral motion Nature never nomena objects observation particles phenomena philosophy physical investigation planets possible present principle proof Ptolemaic system realm reason reli religion and science revelation rience says Prof scientific scientific method sense sidereal day similar soul space spiritual star substance supposed teleological argument theism theology theories things thought tion true truth Tyndall universe verification vibrations
Popular passages
Page 138 - That gravity should be innate, inherent, and essential to matter, so that one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum, without the mediation of anything else...
Page 69 - If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number'} No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.
Page 199 - Whereas the main Business of Natural Philosophy is to argue from Phenomena without feigning Hypotheses, and to deduce Causes from Effects, till we come to the very first Cause, which certainly is not mechanical; and not only to unfold the Mechanism of the World, but chiefly to resolve these and such like Questions.
Page 102 - Every body continues in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a straight line, except so far as it may be compelled by force to change that state.
Page 90 - ... not-self," have we, or can we by any possibility have, any such unquestionable and immediate certainty as we have of the states of consciousness which we consider to be their effects. They are not immediately observed facts, but results of the application of the law of causation to those facts. Strictly speaking, the existence of a "self" and of a "not-self" are hypotheses by which we account for the facts of consciousness.
Page 215 - ... us with a conviction that the truth of our hypothesis is certain. No accident could give rise to such an extraordinary coincidence. No false supposition could, after being adjusted to one class of phenomena, exactly represent a different class, where the agreement was unforeseen and uncontemplated.
Page 60 - For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things which are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse.
Page 169 - When, then, we say that the uniformity which we observe in the course of events is exact and universal, we mean no more than this: that we are able to state general rules which are far more exact than direct experiment and which apply to all cases that we are at present likely to come across.
Page 108 - His strength and fertility as a discoverer is to be referred in great part to the stimulus of his imagination. Scientific men fight shy of the word because of its ultra-scientific connotations ; but the fact is that without the exercise of this power, our knowledge of nature would be a mere tabulation of co-existences and sequences.
Page 126 - When, for example, the contents of a cell are described as perfectly homogeneous, as absolutely structureless, because the microscope fails to distinguish any structure, then I think the microscope begins to play a mischievous part.