"To all appearance, the phenomena exhibited by the pendulum are not to be accounted for by impact: in fact, it is usually assumed that corresponding phenomena would take place if the earth and the pendulum were situated in an absolute vacuum, and at any conceivable distance from one another. If this be so, it follows that there must be two totally different kinds of causes of motion: the one impact—a vera causa [true cause], of which, to all appearance, we have constant experience; the other, attractive or repulsive 'force'—a metaphysical entity which is physically inconceivable."
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Original Language: English
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Sources
Thomas Henry Huxley, The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century (1889)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Metaphysics
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Metaphysics
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