"Science, like philosophy, has sought to escape from the doctrine of perpetual flux by finding some permanent substratum amid changing phenomena. Chemistry seemed to satisfy this desire. It was found that fire, which appears to destroy, only transmutes: elements are recombined, but each atom that existed before combustion still exists when the process is completed. Accordingly it was supposed that atoms are indestructible, and that all change in the physical world consists merely in re-arrangement of persistent elements. This view prevailed until the discovery of radio-activity, when it was found that atoms could disintegrate."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
p. 46.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/A_History_of_Western_Philosophy
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
A History of Western Philosophy
359 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by A History of Western Philosophy →
Related Quotes
"Heraclitus himself, for all his belief in change, allowed something everlasting. The conception of eternity (as oppos…"
"The doctrine of perpetual flux, as taught by Heraclitus, is painful, and science, as we have seen, can do nothing to …"
"A dose of disaster is likely to bring men's hopes back to their older super-terrestrial forms: if life on earth is di…"
"He [Anaxagoras] rejected necessity and chance as giving the origins of things; nevertheless there was no "Providence"…"
"Nothing daunted, the physicists invented new and smaller units, called electrons and protons, out of which atoms were…"
"Passing from that small to the large, astronomy no longer allows us to regard the heavenly bodies as everlasting."
"The search for something permanent is one of the deepest of instincts leading men to philosophy. It is derived, no do…"
"The cheerfulness of the nineteenth century turned men against these static conceptions, and modern liberal theology b…"
"Philosophically inclined mystics, unable to deny that whatever is in time is transitory, have invented a conception o…"
"The south Italian and Sicilian philosophers were more inclined to mysticism and religion than those of Ionia, who wer…"