e martë, 9 tetor 2007

Speaking somewhat loosely, I think we may say that the



processes of evolution from an extended nebula to a condensed
nebula and from the latter to a spherical star, are
comparatively rapid, perhaps normally confined to a few tens of
millions of years; but that the further we proceed in the
development process, from the blue star to the yellow, and
possibly but not certainly on to the red star, the slower is
the progress made, for the radiating surface through which all
the energy from the interior must pass becomes smaller and
smaller in proportion to the mass, and the convection currents
which carry heat from the interior to the surface must slow
down in speed
Speaking somewhat loosely, I think we may say that the
processes of evolution from an extended nebula to a condensed
nebula and from the latter to a spherical star, are
comparatively rapid, perhaps normally confined to a few tens of
millions of years; but that the further we proceed in the
development process, from the blue star to the yellow, and
possibly but not certainly on to the red star, the slower is
the progress made, for the radiating surface through which all
the energy from the interior must pass becomes smaller and
smaller in proportion to the mass, and the convection currents
which carry heat from the interior to the surface must slow
down in speed.




THE PROBLEM WHICH CONFRONTS THE CHILD



THE PROBLEM WHICH CONFRONTS THE CHILD.--Well it is that the child,
starting his life"s journey, cannot see the magnitude of the task before
him. Cast amid a world of objects of whose very existence he is
ignorant, and whose meaning and uses have to be learned by slow and
often painful experience, he proceeds step by step through the senses in
his discovery of the objects about him. Yet, considered again, we
ourselves are after all but a step in advance of the child. Though we
are somewhat more familiar with the use of our senses than he, and know
a few more objects about us, yet the knowledge of the wisest of us is at
best pitifully meager compared with the richness of nature. So
impossible is it for us to know all our material environment, that men
have taken to becoming specialists. One man will spend his life in the
study of a certain variety of plants, while there are hundreds of
thousands of varieties all about him; another will study a particular
kind of animal life, perhaps too minute to be seen with the naked eye,
while the world is teeming with animal forms which he has not time in
his short day of life to stop to examine; another will study the land
forms and read the earth"s history from the rocks and geological strata,
but here again nature"s volume is so large that he has time to read but
a small fraction of the whole. Another studies the human body and learns
to read from its expressions the signs of health and sickness, and to
prescribe remedies for its ills; but in this field also he has found it
necessary to divide the work, and so we have specialists for almost
every organ of the body.




It is by way of giving an effective statement of the point in dispute



that he quotes the anecdote of Caius Toranius, as an extreme instance
of filial ingratitude, and supposes it to be put to the wild boy caught
in the woods of Hanover, with the view of ascertaining whether he would
feel the sentiment of disapprobation as we do
It is by way of giving an effective statement of the point in dispute
that he quotes the anecdote of Caius Toranius, as an extreme instance
of filial ingratitude, and supposes it to be put to the wild boy caught
in the woods of Hanover, with the view of ascertaining whether he would
feel the sentiment of disapprobation as we do. Those that affirm an
innate moral sense, must answer in the affirmative; those that deny it,
in the negative.