First Principles by Herbert Spencer

Author:Herbert Spencer [Spencer, Herbert]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: Philosophy
ISBN: 9781443721455
Publisher: Sutton Press
Published: 1862-01-15T10:16:45.307000+00:00

CHAPTER XIII.

SIMPLE AND COMPOUND EVOLUTION.

§ 98. Where the only forces at work are those directly tending to produce aggregation or diffusion, the whole history of an aggregate will comprise no more than the approaches of its components towards their common centre and their recessions from their common centre. The process of Evolution, including nothing beyond what was described at the outset of the last chapter, will be simple.

Again, in cases where the forces which cause movements towards a common centre are greatly in excess of all other forces, any changes additional to those constituting aggregation will be comparatively insignificant—there will be integration scarcely at all modified by further kinds of redistribution.

Or if, because of the smallness of the mass to be integrated, or because of the little motion the mass receives from without in return for the motion it loses, the integration proceeds rapidly; there will similarly be wrought but insignificant effects on the integrating mass by incident forces, even though these are considerable.

But when, conversely, the integration is but slow; either because the quantity of motion contained in the aggregate is relatively great; or because, though the quantity of motion which each part possesses is not relatively great, the large size of the aggregate prevents easy dissipation of the motion; or because, though motion is rapidly lost more motion is rapidly received; then, other forces will cause in the aggregate appreciable modifications. Along with the change constituting integration, there will take place supplementary changes. The Evolution, instead of being simple, will be compound.

The several propositions thus briefly enunciated require some explanation.

§ 99. So long as a body moves freely through space, every force that acts on it produces an equivalent in the shape of some change in its motion. No matter how high its velocity, the slightest lateral traction or resistance causes it to deviate from its line of movement—causes it to move towards the new source of traction or away from the new source of resistance, just as much as it would do had it no other motion. And the effect of the perturbing influence goes on accumulating in the ratio of the squares of the times during which its action continues uniform. This same body, however, will, if it is united in certain ways with other bodies, cease to be moveable by small incident forces. When it is held fast by gravitation or cohesion, these small incident forces, instead of giving it some relative motion through space, are otherwise dissipated.

What here holds of masses, holds, in a qualified way, of the sensible parts of masses, and of molecules. As the sensible parts of a mass, and the molecules of a mass, are, by virtue of their aggregation, not perfectly free, it is not true of each of them, as of a body moving through space, that every incident force produces an equivalent change of position: part of the force goes in working other changes. But in proportion as the parts or the molecules are feebly bound together, incident forces effect marked re-arrangements among them.

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