Curiosities of Science (Volume 1); A Book for Old and Young (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: L THE GEEAT TRUTHS OF ASTBONOMY. The difficulty of understanding these marvellous truths has been glanced at by an old divine (see Things not generally Known, p. 1); but the rarity of their full comprehension by those unskilled in mathematical science is more powerfully urged by Lord Brougham in these cogent terms: Satisfying himself of tho laws which regulate the mutual actions of the planetary bodies, the mathematician can convince himself of a truth yet more sublime than Newton's discovery of gravitation, though flowing from it; and must yield his assent to the marvellous position, that all the irregularities occasioned in the system of the universe by the mutual attraction of its members are periodical, and subject to an eternal law, which prevents them from ever exceeding a stated amount, and secures through all time the balanced structure of a universe composed of bodies whoso mighty bulk and prodigious swiftness of motion mock the utmost efforts of the human imagination. All these truths are to the skilful mathematician as thoroughly known, and their evidence is as clear, as the simplest proposition of arithmetic to common understandings. But how few are those who thus know and comprehend them! Of all the millions that thoroughly believe these truths, certainly not a thousand individuals are capable of following even any considerable portion of the demonstrations upon which they rest; and probably not a hundred now living have ever gone through the whole steps of these demonstrations.?Dissertation! on Subjects of Science connected with Natural Theology, vol. ii. Sir David Brewster thus impressively illustrates the same subject: Minds fitted and prepared for this species of inquiry are capable of appreciating the great variety of evidence by which the truths o...