Science Books

PREFATORY NOTE. In complying with the wish of the publishers of Professor Haeckel's reply to Professor Virchow, that I should furnish a prefatory note expressing my own opinion in respect of the subject-matter of the controversy, Gay's homely lines, prophetic of the fate of those "who in quarrels interpose," emerge from some brain-cupboard in which they have been hidden since my... more...

INTRODUCTORY NOTES The author in this work endeavours to solve the greatest scientific problem that has puzzled scientists for the past two hundred years. The question has arisen over and over again, since the discovery of universal gravitation by Sir Isaac Newton, as to what is the physical cause of the attraction of gravitation. “Action at a distance” has long ceased to be recognized as a... more...

PREFACE The object of this book is to give an account of the science of Astronomy, as it is known at the present day, in a manner acceptable to the general reader. It is too often supposed that it is impossible to acquire any useful knowledge of Astronomy without much laborious study, and without adventuring into quite a new world of thought. The reasoning applied to the study of the celestial orbs is,... more...

In turning from the embryology to the phylogeny of man—from the development of the individual to that of the species—we must bear in mind the direct causal connection that exists between these two main branches of the science of human evolution. This important causal nexus finds its simplest expression in "the fundamental law of organic development," the content and purport of which we have... more...

CHAPTER I. . . . The justification of all persons who have freed themselves from toil is now founded on experimental, positive science.  The scientific theory is as follows:— “For the study of the laws of life of human societies, there exists but one indubitable method,—the positive, experimental, critical method “Only sociology, founded on biology, founded on all the positive sciences, can... more...

A procession of the damned. By the damned, I mean the excluded. We shall have a procession of data that Science has excluded. Battalions of the accursed, captained by pallid data that I have exhumed, will march. You'll read them—or they'll march. Some of them livid and some of them fiery and some of them rotten. Some of them are corpses, skeletons, mummies, twitching, tottering, animated by... more...

CHAPTER I. THE DISCOVERY OF THE UNIVERSE The beginning of the victorious career of modern science was very largely due to the making of two stimulating discoveries at the close of the Middle Ages. One was the discovery of the earth: the other the discovery of the universe. Men were confined, like molluscs in their shells, by a belief that they occupied the centre of a comparatively small... more...

THE DIAGRAMS. The diagrams, it will be observed, are grouped under the seasons, and they indicate the positions of the constellations as they appear at 9 o'clock p.m. in mid-season. To facilitate finding and observing the constellations, the student should face in the direction indicated in the text. This applies to all constellations excepting those near the zenith. The four large plates are so... more...

THE PREFACE. One reason for the present publication has been the favourable reception of those of my Observations on different kinds of air, which were published in the Philosophical Transactions for the year 1772, and the demand for them by persons who did not chuse, for the sake of those papers only, to purchase the whole volume in which they were contained. Another motive was the additions to my... more...

ON THE RECEPTION OF THE 'ORIGIN OF SPECIES.' To the present generation, that is to say, the people a few years on the hither and thither side of thirty, the name of Charles Darwin stands alongside of those of Isaac Newton and Michael Faraday; and, like them, calls up the grand ideal of a searcher after truth and interpreter of Nature. They think of him who bore it as a rare combination of... more...