"And for rejecting such a Medium, we have the authority of those the oldest and most celebrated philosophers of ancient Greece and Phoenicia, who made a Vacuum and Atoms and the Gravity of Atoms the first Principles of their Philosophy, tacitly attributing Gravity to some other Cause than dense Matter. Later Philosophers banish the Consideration of such a Cause out of natural Philosophy, feigning Hypotheses for explaining all things mechanically, and referring other Causes to Metaphysicks: Whereas the main Business of natural Philosophy is to argue from Phænomena without feigning Hypotheses, and to deduce Causes from Effects, till we come to the very first Cause, which certainly is not mechanical; and not only to unfold the Mechanism of the World, but chiefly to resolve these such such like Questions."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Query 28 (4th ed. 1730)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Opticks
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Opticks
Opticks: or, A Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions and Colours of Light is a collection of three books by Isaac Newton that was published in English in 1704 (a scholarly Latin translation appeared in 1706). The treatise analyses the fundamental nature of light by means of the refraction of light with prisms and lenses, the diffraction of light by closely spaced sheets of glass, and the behaviour of colour mixtures with spectral lights or pigment powders.
37 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Opticks →
Related Quotes
"[T]he Instinct of Brutes and Insects, can be the effect of nothing else than the Wisdom and Skill of a powerful ever-…"
"Are not gross Bodies and Light convertible into one another, and may not Bodies receive much of their Activity from t…"
"And since Space is divisible in infinitum, and Matter is not necessarily in all places, it may be also allow'd that G…"
"[T]o derive two or three general Principles of Motion from Phænomena, and afterwards to tell us how the Properties an…"
"By this way of Analysis we may proceed from Compounds to Ingredients, and from Motions to the Forces producing them; …"
"How these Attractions may be perform'd, I do not here consider. What I call Attraction may be perform'd by impulse, o…"
"[I]t seems probable to me that God, in the Beginning, formed Matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, moveable Par…"
"Have not the small Particles of Bodies certain Powers, Virtues, or Forces, by which they act at a distance, not only …"
"As in Mathematicks, so in Natural Philosophy, the Investigation of difficult Things by the Method of Analysis, ought …"
"[W]e are not to consider the World as the Body of God, or the several Parts thereof, as the Parts of God. He is an un…"