Metaphysical inquiry into the method, objects and result of ancient and modern philosophy / By Isaac Preston Cory.

  • Isaac Preston Cory
Date:
1833
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Metaphysical inquiry into the method, objects and result of ancient and modern philosophy / By Isaac Preston Cory. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    taining the Vacuum and rejecting Gra- vity as a quality, hesitated not to assert the absolute vacuum, and gravitation as an inherent quality of matter; not ad- verting to the insuperable metaphysical difficulty thus introduced, that they even- tually maintained two distinct and inde- pendent chains of causation, continually crossing each other and assuming each other's offices: by one of which motion was communicated, through matter in contact, by impulse and vibration, in continued succession; and by the other through vacuum by means of occult qualities commonly so called : by either of which the same effects might be pro- duced. Euler and other foreign philo- sophers, more sensible of the real diffi- culty of the case, rejected without a scruple such a version of Sir Isaac New- ton’s opinions, upon the express grounds, that two secondary causes of motion, one from Inertia, the other from Attraction, were utterly incongruous and inadmis-