Natural forces

“ If we are asked whether we can explain such laws further, we usually reply by saying "these are the forces of the natural world." Their correlations and modifications rule the kingdom of nature, and the great globe itself;—nay, they wield the empire of the Universe! ”

“ Mechanical philosophers have suggested the possibility of accumulating and treasuring up for human use some of the greater natural forces, which the action of the elements puts forth with such astonishing energy. ”

“ No form in which nature presents matter, no form which men by their labor give to matter, is stable; even iron rusts and gold abrades; and when the form changes the matter escapes. Light, heat, winds, rain, frost, moths, worms, and other forces are pulling down as fast as the same and other natural forces, including those of man, are building up. ”

“ We have remarked, also, the enormous differences in the stability of natural forces: some of them, as heat, are metamorphosed with great difficulty; others, as electricity, are of very weak permanence; and others, again, in whose existence we have good reasons to believe, are too evanescent to be detected by the keenest scrutiny. ”

“ But soon vital force also yielded to the general law of correlation of natural forces. Vital forces are also transmutable into and derivable from physical and chemical forces. Sun-force, falling on the green leaves of plants, is absorbed and converted into vital force, disappears as light to reappear as life. The amount of life-force generated is measured by the amount of light extinguished. ”

“ The general picture of nature which I have endeavored to delineate would be incomplete if I did not venture to trace a few of the most marked features of the human race, considered with reference to physical gradations — to the geographical distribution of contemporaneous types — to the influence exercised upon man by the forces of nature, and the reciprocal, although weaker action which he in his turn exercises on these natural forces. ”

“ He opposes himself to Nature as one of her own forces, setting in motion arms and legs, head and hands, the natural forces of his body, in order to appropriate Nature's productions in a form adapted to his own wants. ”

“ There is another view which may be taken of the forces which operate on the earth to produce permanency or change. Some parts of the terrestrial system are under the dominion of powers which act energetically to prevent all motion, as the crystalline forces by which the parts of rocks are bound together; other parts are influenced by powers which produce a perpetual movement and change in the matter of which they consist; thus plants and animals are in a constant state of internal movement, by the agency of the vital forces. ”

“ In the foremost rank of these agents, we find Fire and Water,—those two universal and, mighty antagonizing forces, which have most materially influenced the condition of the globe; and which man also has converted into the most efficient instruments of his power, and obedient auxiliaries of his mechanical and chemical and culinary operations. ”

“ And in fact they both are true & intimate parts of the earth, & as such retain the prime natural properties of mutually attracting, of moving, & of disposing themselves toward the position of the world, and of the terrestrial globe; which properties they also impart to each other, and increase, confirm, receive, and retain each other's forces. ”

“ Darwin's views aside, the whole analogy of natural operations furnishes so complete and crushing an argument against the intervention of any but what are termed secondary causes, in the production of all the phenomena of the universe; that, in view of the intimate relations between Man and the rest of the living world; and between the forces exerted by the latter and all other forces, I can see no excuse for doubting that all are co-ordinated terms of Nature's great progression, from the formless to the formed—from the inorganic to the organic—from blind force to conscious intellect and will. ”

“ The universe known thus we call "Nature," and the whole stock in trade of Science is the examination and verification of natural phenomena, with such inferences therefrom as ascertained facts legitimately suggest. From careful and trustworthy observation she can learn what are called the "Laws of Nature," that is to say the manner in which the various elements and forces of the universe are found constantly to act, in given circumstances ”

“ Every body perseveres in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed thereon. ”

“ And beyond his form no physical progress seems possible, for he fulfills what we conceive to be Nature's design, viz., to husband force by the fullest avoidance of gravity and friction, to decrease weight to the lowest available point consistent with the size and strength necessary to best adapt him to surrounding conditions, and to produce the utmost susceptibility to impression of natural force—to attain a form, in fact, having the greatest excess of available energy, and best adapted to gain experiences of the conditions of nature. ”

“ Even if, abandoning these perplexing living things, one falls back upon the mere inorganic{25} forces of the world, what a prodigious amount of energy here too comes into play! Nature everywhere eternally building up, and with apparently no blind hand, but with a most clear, definite, and shaping policy. ”

“ He wished to be shown that changes in form caused evolution in force; that chemical or mechanical energy had, by natural selection and minute changes, under uniform conditions, converted itself into thought. ”

“ Nature, as we see it, exists under the influence of particular forces and conditions, vital, chemical, and mechanical; and the sum of the phenomena that now occur in a given time is the measure of those forces and conditions. The exterior influence of the sun, and the ethereal spaces; the mass and quality of the atmosphere; the size, figure, density, and motions of the earth; the distribution of land and sea, —are all circumstances of great importance, to which the vegetable and animal productions of the globe, as well as the chemical and mechanical operations upon it, are adjusted. ”

“ Light, heat, fire, air, water, and salts, are steps by which we descend from the top of Nature’s ladder to its base, which is fixed earth. And these are at the same time the only principles that we must admit and combine for the explanation of all phenomena. ”

“ It is to the fact that all Nature is under the constraint due to the constant silent operation of physical Force that we owe, therefore, the law which determines the most essential features of vitality. The pulsations in which life consists and by which it is sustained are attributable to the constraint and limitation which we recognise as the effect of the operation of Natural Force. ”

“ Physical force, force applied outwardly to the body, as distinguished from persuasion, &c.; Physical geography, an account of the state of the earth in its natural condition—its mountain-chains, ocean-currents, distribution of plants and animals, conditions of climate, &c.; Physical truth, the agreement of thought with what exists in nature ”

“ CONSERVING OUR NATURAL ENVIRONMENT Beyond civilization we will conserve, share, beautify and, if possible, improve the earth, which is our physical base of operations.
The earth is an irregular sphere, one of a number of planets circling the sun, from which we get light, heat and radiation. The earth has a shell or crust made of various minerals. ”

“ Light, air, what we eat and drink, or what in any way gets into the system, temperature, exercise of mind and body—in short, the conditions under which we live—all exert their influence in favoring or otherwise a natural passage through life. Within us, operations forming a part of the operations of Nature proceed, but these operations are influenced by—owe their activity, indeed, to—the surrounding conditions, and thus it is that upon these surrounding conditions depends whether a natural course is run or not. ”

“ Just so far as we can recognize the ordinary modes of operation of the common forces of nature,—gravity, cohesion, elasticity, transudation, chemical action, and the rest,—we see the so-called vital acts in the light of a larger range of known facts and familiar analogies. ”

“ We believe in the Conservation of the physical forces, in the Law of Evolution as it is at present and for a limited past time found to express the facts of nature, and in the fact of the Dissipation of Energy. All this we believe as the scientifically probable view, and we do so on the authority of certain students of physical science, who, having examined the facts, seem to agree upon so much as capable of popular exposition. ”

“ Their effect is that by widening our knowledge of the earth on which we live, they increase our power to interpose in the play of the forces of nature and to modify it to suit our purposes and preferences. ”

“ The relation between physical conditions and history in its wider acceptation being thus fundamental, it may be well to consider in somewhat greater detail the special reactions of a single tolerably definite portion of the natural environment upon human development. ”

“ To introduce this topic properly, I beg to remind you at the outset that the progress of science during the last half century has been most pronounced and satisfactory in the investigation of the nature, origin, interdependence, and interconvertibility of the various manifestations of energy that are called familiarly “the forces of nature” ”

“ In the progress of connected natural phenomena from east to west, that great law of nature is plainly revealed which has so often and evidently manifested itself in the earth’s organism, as well as in the state of nations dependent upon it. ”

“ We can have no idea of a natural power, which could project a Sun out of Chaos, except by comparing it to the explosions or earthquakes owing to the sudden evolution of aqueous or of other more elastic vapours; of the power of which under immeasurable degrees of heat, and compression, we are yet ignorant. ”

“ Before the physical forces had completed their work, a new force had been added to them; that of life. The bare rocks became clothed with living moss. In marshy places, warm and moist, a rich vegetation grew and decayed. ”

“ They placed under requisition every kingdom of created things, and in a laboratory in mid-earth set in joint motion all the powers that move the volcano and the earthquake, that re-fashion the world's form and substance, that govern all the stately procession of natural phenomena. ”

“ They prove that for countless ages, that from the inconceivably remote period of the deposition of the Laurentian rocks, light and heat, air and moisture, land and sea, and all general physical forces have been so arranged and co-ordinated as to produce and maintain a state of things which secured during all these countless ages life and health and pleasure for the countless millions of individuals contained in the multitude of species of creatures which have contemporaneously or successively peopled the earth. ”

“ Recalling that nature ascends by successive degrees from the implastic, inert rock to the sensitive atmospheres that lie about the sun that they may be charged with its vivifying energies, and communicate them to the air and to the more solid matters of the earth, it may be perceived that nature is an ascending series of effects; that is, the forces in the air, water, and rock are effects of the lowest order, and must originate in a corresponding cause; the forces in ether are effects of a higher order, necessarily from a correspondingly higher cause ”

“ Science has developed the grand truth, that it is by the exercise of this all-pervading influence that the earth is retained in its orbit—that the pellucid globe of dew which glistens on the leaf is bound together—that the débris which float upon the lake accumulate into one mass—that the sea exhibits the phenomena of the tides—and the aërial ocean its barometric changes. In all things this force is active, and throughout nature it is ever present. ”

“ First, we may study the forces now operating upon and in the earth—the geological agencies—such as the ocean and atmosphere, rivers, rain and frosts, earthquakes, volcanoes, hot springs, etc., and observe the various effects which they produce. ”

“ Nature, with tireless ingenuity, everywhere publishes this fact: in bursting bud and falling seed, in the updrawn waters and the descending rain; throw a stone into the air, and when the impulse is exhausted, gravity brings it to earth again. ”

“ But we no longer hold it by the hand; we have lost our miraculous power; our arm is no more as strong as the frost; nor our will equivalent to gravity and the elective attractions. Yet we can use nature as a convenient standard, and the meter of our rise and fall. ”

“ And again, though the vital movements which go on in the frame of vegetables and animals depend on agencies still less known, and probably still more complex, than those which rule the weather, each of the powers on which such movements depend has its peculiar laws of action, and these are as universal and as invariable as the law by which a stone falls to the earth when not supported. ”

“ By what good fortune are the powers of heat, of water, of steam, of air, the effects of the earth’s annual and diurnal motions, and probably other causes, so adjusted, that through all their struggles the elemental world goes on, upon the whole, so quietly and steadily? ”

“ But once conceive the atmosphere as arranged like a perfectly adjusted instrument for the meeting-place and co-operation of sun-force, and earth-force, where are elaborated all the benefits designed for our mundane creation, and we begin to look for better explanations. ”

“ In tracing the history of these natural phenomena we enter at once into the consideration of Geological Dynamics, including the nature and mode of operation of all kinds of physical agents, that have at any time, and in any manner, affected the surface and interior of the earth. ”