John Wesley Powell

“ If we go on to consider persistence abstractly, we must still remember that the persistence is the persistency of a unity, an extension, a speed, and a consciousness. But between these persistent concomitants there are relations, and these relations are changeable; so when we consider persistence and change, it is the persistence of particles of essentials and change of relations of particles of essentials. Only relations are changeable, essentials are persistent. ”

“ Now we know that heat is not a special form of matter, but is only a deflection of the motions of the particles of matter whose speeds are constant, and that one body causes heat in another but does not yield heat as speed of particles so that it loses what the other gains. While the heat of one body induces heat in another, no motion as speed leaves the cooling body, but its reaction transmutes the heat motion into the structural motion of the body and that reaction which we call the transfer of heat from one body to another is in fact its equilibration through mutual transmutation. ”

“ The consideration of the totality of changes occurring in the universe is evolution. These changes can all be resolved into changes in the position of the ultimate particle of matter. Directed changes in position lead to incorporation, then incorporation is succeeded by reincorporation, and the totality of these changes is the totality of evolution. Starting with this concept we may be able to redefine evolution in a more satisfactory manner at a later stage.
If there were no motion there would be no time but only persistence. ”

“ The evolution of plants is fundamentally chemical under the law of affinity; it is accelerated by adaptation to environment; it is then subject to the law of acceleration by heterogeneity, and evolution is still further accelerated by the survival of the fittest. ”

“ Everywhere and forever the states are changing by events and the geonomic realm is forever in flux. The winds are in motion, the waters are in waves, tides and currents, and the waters themselves are evaporated and move in clouds through the air and are condensed into streams that flow into the great bodies of water and into the ocean itself. The fluid waters are transformed into solid, and the solid are gathered at high altitudes and high latitudes into great bodies of ice that are forever growing, melting, and moving forward. ”

“ But there is no black, or white, or tawny species, there is no straight or woolly-haired species, there is no horizontal or oblique-eyed species, there is no blue-eyed or black-eyed species, there is no broad or long-skulled species, but these characteristics are now intermingled in inextricable confusion—the result of the admixture of streams of blood. Thus the method of differentiation of animal species has been reversed in the case of man. That in which men now differ is intellectual power, but fools are not necessarily blue-eyed and wise men black-eyed. ”

“ When particles unite with one another in constituting a body, so that the speeds are divided into internal and external motions, by virtue of the external motion, they may change their space relations to external particles. In order that there may be bodies with changeable environment the particles must, by some means or another, associate. The first cause or method of evolution is choice; the first effect of evolution is change of environment. ”

“ This soil is the theater of chemical changes by which the more highly compound molecules are developed, necessary directly to vegetation and indirectly to animal life. As chemical compounds are more sensitive to change, mineral forms are more sensitive to metamorphosis, and as mineral and molar forms are changed processes are multiplied and become more efficient in the production of change. Thus the new law of evolution which we find in the geonomic realm, is the acceleration of change by increasing heterogeneity. ”

“ This mode of evolution, therefore, needs more elaborate presentation than that which we have already given for the other laws. By man in civilization the law of effort is transmuted into the law of culture, the method of invention; that is, the effort is designed effort for the purpose of improving human conditions. The chemical law still remains valid, but the exercise of organs is ever from age to age, century to century, and even decade to decade concentrated upon one special system of organs. ”

“ There could be no time without motion, and no motion without space, and no space without number. The first or simplest manifestation of time is the division of motion into parts by events. This gives us the simplest concept of time known to science, and whenever in science time is considered, some motion is divided into parts by events. Thus the motion of the earth about the sun is divided into annual parts by events, and the motion of the earth on its axis is divided into daily parts by events. ”

“ Man does not become a climber to live on the trees, but he ascends the trees on ladders and he fells the trees for temples. Man does not seek shelter among the rocks, but he quarries the rocks and builds palaces. ”

“ There was a time when a blizzard might destroy a tribe; but now a storm may sweep in vain from the boreal zone about the dwellings of civilized men, for man constructs his home against these vicissitudes. ”

“ If particles could exist without speed there would be no change and no motion; or if there was but one particle with speed there would be only rectilineal motion, but as there are many particles with speed they collide and deflect one another; deflected speed is directed motion. The first phase of directed motion is thus change of direction in free particles. Here we have persistence in speed and change in direction by which persistence is divided into portions by events of collision, and this manifests time. ”

“ The law of survival also undergoes a profound modification. Men are no longer subject to the vicissitudes of natural environment where winds may congeal their limbs, where floods may overwhelm them with death, and where disease may carry them away in multitudes. These agencies still act and have their victims, but the inventions of man are ever becoming more potent for the preservation of life. ”

“ In the natural world evolution is primarily by incorporation and reincorporation. This incorporation is by affinity. We have shown that affinity is explained as the consciousness and choice of ultimate particles. When we reach animate beings in which affinity is mind, the Lamarckian law of effort becomes potent in evolution until men are developed and the five forms of culture are invented. Molecular reincorporation by heredity now goes hand in hand with culture or self-activity modified by social environment. ”

“ As in the stars we are compelled to discuss ethereality, terrestrial heat, light, electricity, magnetism, and gravity, together with centripetal and centrifugal force and fluidity, so in the geonomic realm we must study not only the same subjects, but must also consider the solid condition with the stresses and strains involved and the metageneses that appear through chemism. ”

“ While there may be solid bodies in the other orbs, as in the earth, astronomical investigation does not reveal them to research as solids; such solid bodies are recognized to be studied only in the earth, where they are revealed as rocks, and if they may exist in the other orbs the science of astronomy does not deal with them. The forms of the stellar bodies are those assumed by fluids under the force of gravity. The stars themselves are particles in systems which are bodies of a higher order. ”

“ Man is not adapted to the environment of climate, but he adapts the climate to himself; when it is too cold he kindles a fire, and he protects himself when away from the fire by clothing; when it is too wet he covers himself with a roof ”

“ We know little of the reincorporation of stars, but we know much about the reincorporation of rocks, plants, animals, and societies. The study of incorporation and reincorporation is evolution from the standpoint of causation, which in turn is the study of time. ”

“ Another factor in evolution appears in the organization of demotic life which may be observed among those of the lower animals in which societies are found, appearing among mankind and becoming the chief factor in civilized life. It is a method of evolution to which inadequate attention has been given, and the failure to recognize it has led to misapprehension of the nature of human evolution and to preposterous claims for the efficiency in mankind of the laws of evolution found among lower animals. ”

“ Man is not only an heir to the past generations, but he coöperates in the activities of the present, and when he dies he bequeaths the intellectual wealth which his self-activity has acquired in coöperation with all his contemporaries of the world. ”

“ Human providence is more potent than flood, more potent than drought, more potent than wind. The man of intellect wields a power that giants cannot exercise.
The differentiation of animal species found in the lower world is replaced as a new method of progress is evolved. The animals differentiate into biotic species. ”

“ Vitality as a state first finds expression in the continued growth of the plant, and a still higher expression in the heredity of the species, for the state is continued from plant to germ through the germ in life and growth to reproduction, where it again appears in the new germ. ”

“ At the surface of the earth these changes are still further multiplied in the production of soils, which is accomplished by the wash of rains, the grinding of ice, the chemical decomposition of the rock, especially aided by heating and cooling, together with the disintegration that arises from the action of plants and animals upon the soil, and by the commingling of their bodies with it, so that a highly compound mass of particles is produced, known as the soil. ”

“ Affinity is choice of association in atoms and molecules by which new kinds are developed by the development of new orders of units through their incorporation into one body. This is illustrated in the conventional numbers where the ten units of one order constitute one of a higher order. Again, the bricks of a house, thousands in number, constitute one house in a body of a higher order. Now the atoms of a molecule are associated by affinity, which surely resembles choice of association, though it may be the choice of dominant particles or mutual choice ”

“ He who cannot follow up this distinction in all of its logical results under the conditions of complexity which are exhibited in the various bodies of the universe considered by scientific men, had better devote his time to metaphysical speculation where logical distinctions are confused and fine-spun theories of the unknown are the substance of philosophy; for scientific men deal with simple facts, though they may be tangled in relations, while metaphysicians confessedly deal in speculation about the unknown and boldly affirm that realities are fallacies. ”

“ There was a time when drought in a narrow belt of country might produce a famine and when the people of such regions might perish; but no more famines can occur, for railroads link all fields to every man’s farm. ”

“ In the ethereal realm we know of the ethereal state; in the stellar realm we know of the ethereal and the fluid states; in the geonomic realm we know of the ethereal, the fluid, and the solid states.
In the study of the earth a differentiation is found in the air, the sea, the land, and the nucleus. They are also integrated by the rotation of the earth, which is the revolution of its particles. The air is imperfectly differentiated into winds. ”

“ When a scientific man speaks of phenomena, he speaks of the manifestations of reality; when a metaphysician speaks of phenomena he speaks of manifestations of the unknown reality of which he dreams, while, he deems that the realities of the scientific man are creations of fancy. ”

“ There are those who believe that an impassable barrier exists between them, but this doctrine is rapidly being dispelled; indeed it is no exaggeration to say that scientific men rather confidently believe that the barrier is soon to be thrown down. That the barrier between vitality and motility has been overthrown is believed by many biologists, though there are still those who believe that the apparent consciousness of plants as exhibited in a great variety of phenomena can be explained as mechanical phenomena. ”

“ Man cultivates his physical powers by exercise in the industries and in a variety of athletic sports, in the same manner as do the lower animals, and he invents new methods of physical training; but he also and chiefly develops methods of intellectual training, instruction and research, to which the schools, the libraries, the journals, and the systems of research abundantly attest. ”

“ It must be understood that the states of matter do not always appear to be separated by hard and fast planes of demarcation; and so far as we can assert with confidence, there seems to be a gap between ether and ponderable matter, though a complete recognition of the ether is but an event of the present day. The gaseous and liquid states are included in the fluid state. ”

“ The animals which furnish food are cultivated and multiplied under the direction of man. Vegetal foods are in like manner multiplied and cultivated in vast fields, vineyards, orchards, and gardens, and new varieties are forever developed by the skill of man. ”