First Principles by herbert Spencer

Author:herbert Spencer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: GENERALITIES
Publisher: Watts And Co London

'r ones. Year by year connexions are established

among orders of phenomena that appear unallied; and these connexions, multiplying and strengthening, gradually bring the seemingly unallied orders under a common bond. When, for example, Humboldt quotes the observation of the Swiss—" it is going to rain because we hear the murmur of the torrents nearer,"—when he recognizes the kinship between this and an observation of his own, that the cataracts of the Orinoco are heard at a greater distance by night than by day—when he notes the analogy between these facts and the fact that the unusual visibility of remote objects is also an indication of coming rain—and when he points out that the common cause of these variations is the smaller hindrance offered to the passage of both light and sound, by media which are comparatively homogeneous, either in temperature or hygrometric state; he helps in bringing under one generalization certain traits of light and certain traits of sound. Experiments having shown that light and sound conform to like laws of reflection and refraction, the conclusion that they are both produced by undulations— though undulations of unlike kinds—gains probability : there is an incipient integration of two classes of facts between which no connexion was suspected in times past. A still more decided integration has been of late taking place between the once independent sub-sciences of Electricity, Magnetism, and Light.

The process will manifestly be carried much further. Such propositions as those set forth in preceding chapters, on " The Persistence of Force/' " The Transformation and Equivalence of Forces," " The Direction of Motion," and " The Rhythm of Motion," unite within single bonds phenomena belonging to all orders of existences. And if there is such a thing as that which we here understand by Philosophy, there must eventually be reached a universal integration.

§ 114. Nor do the industrial and aesthetic Arts fail to supply us with equally conclusive evidence. The progress from small and simple tools, to complex and large machines, is a progress in integration. Among what

are classed as the mechanical powers, the advance from the lever to the wheel-and-axle is an advance from a simple agent to an agent made up of several simple ones. On comparing the wheel-ana-axle, or any of the mechanical appliances used in early times with those used now, we see that in each of our machines several of the primitive machines are united. A modern apparatus for spinning or weaving, for making stockings or lace, contains not simply a lever, an inclined plane, a screw, a wheel-and-axle, joined together, but several of each-all made into a whole. Again, in early ages, when horse-power and man-power were alone employed, the motive agent was not bound up with the tool moved; but the two have now become in many cases joined together. The firebox and boiler of a locomotive are combined with the machinery which the steam works. A much more extensive integration is seen in every factory. Here numerous complicated machines are all connected by driving shafts with the same steam-engine—all united with it into one vast apparatus.

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