Scientific Side-Lights

1023. ENJOYMENT BY ILLUSION: Made Happy by Attempting To Seem So.

Let us examine one of these active illusions a little more fully. It would at first sight seem to be a perfectly simple thing to determine at any given moment whether we are enjoying ourselves, whether our emotional condition rises above the pleasure-threshold or point of indifference and takes on a positive hue of the agreeable or pleasurable. Yet there is good reason for supposing that people not unfrequently deceive themselves on this matter. It is, perhaps, hardly an exaggeration to say that most of us are capable of imagining that we are having enjoyment when we conform to the temporary fashion of social amusement. It has been cynically observed that people go into society less in order to be happy than to seem so, and one may add that in this semblance of enjoyment they may, provided they are not blasé, deceive themselves as well as others. The expectation of enjoyment, the knowledge that the occasion is intended to bring about this result, the recognition of the external signs of enjoyment in others—all this may serve to blind a man in the earlier stages of social amusement to his actual mental condition.

— SULLY Illusions, ch. 8, p. 200. (A., 1897.) 

1020. ENERGY, THE CONSERVATION OF

The sum total of all causes work- ing in Nature that can produce change in the physical world is as invariable as the totality of the store of matter. No manifestation of force can arise out of nothing, none can altogether disappear. All of the changes we observe consist in the fact that such a manifestation of force is expressed in some other way, it only assumes another form.

— MEYER Veber Bestrebungen und Ziele der wissenschdftlichen Chemie, p. 34. (Translated for Scientific Side-Lights.) 

1018. ENERGY REQUIRED TO HOLD GASES TOGETHER IN WATER

Prior to experience, no one could suspect that two aeriform substances like oxygen and hydrogen could be obtained from water, and the discovery of the fact, near the beginning of this century, marks an era in the history of science. And even now, familiar as it is, this truth stands out as one of the most remarkable facts of Nature. Moreover, the wonder becomes still greater when we learn that water yields 1,800 times its volume of the two gases, and that these gases retain their aeriform condition so persistently that mechanical pressure alone cannot reduce them to the liquid condition; and still more the wonder grows when we learn further that the amount of energy required to decompose a pound of water into its constituent gases would be adequate to raise a weight of 5,314,200 pounds one foot high; and that, when these gases unite and the water is reproduced, this energy again becomes active.

— COOKE New Chemistry, lect. 5, p. 114. (A., 1899.) 

1015. ENERGY OF POSITION: Water at High Level Able To Do Work; Crossbow Bent; Watch Wound Up.

Let us suppose there are two mills, one with a large pond of water near it and at a high level, while the other has also a pond, but at a lower level than itself. We need hardly ask which of the two is likely to work—clearly the one with the pond at a low level can derive from it no advantage whatever, while the other may use the high-level pond, or head of water, as this is sometimes called, to drive its wheel and do its work. There is, thus, a great deal of work to be got out of water high up—real substantial work, such as grinding corn or thrashing it, or turning wood or sawing it. On the other hand, there is no work at all to be got from a pond of water that is low down. [By virtue of the force of gravity] a stone high up, or a head of water, is in a position of advantage, and has the power of doing work as it falls to a lower level. But there are other forces besides gravity, and, with respect to these, bodies may be in a position of advantage and be able to do work just as truly as the stone, or the head of water, in the case before mentioned. 

Let us take, for instance, the force of elasticity, and consider what happens in a crossbow. When this is bent, the bolt is evidently in a position of advantage with regard to the elastic force of the bow; and, when it is discharged, this energy of position of the bolt is converted into energy of motion, just as, when a stone on the top of a house is allowed to fall, its energy of position is converted into that of actual motion. In like manner a watch wound up is in a position of advantage with respect to the elastic force of the mainspring, and as the wheels of the watch move, this is gradually converted into energy of motion.

— STEWART The Conservation of Energy, ch. 2, p. 377. (Hum., 1880.) 

Blogger’s note: Here’s a nice primer on gravitational potential energy. 

1011. ENERGY AND FORCE DISCRIMINATED: Work the Measure of Energy.

To the ordinary mind, energy and force represent the same thing. And it has not been many years, comparatively, since even scientific men used the words synonymously. Modern chemistry and modern physics make a distinction, and define the two words differently. ”Force” is defined as the cause of motion, or the generator of momentum, while “energy” is expressed in the motion itself, in its power to do work. Force refers to the causes, while energy refers to work or the capacity to do work. The distinction is one that is difficult to make plain. Strictly defined, force is any agency that can cause a motion, arrest a motion, or change the direction of a motion, while energy is motion or the capacity to become motion, and this carries with it the idea of work.

— ELISHA GRAY Nature’s Miracles, vol. ii, ch. 1, p. 1. (E. H. &H., 1900.) 

1007. ENDURANCE A GROWTH: Ability to Sustain Pressure Gradually Acquired; Deep-sea Organisms Perish from Lack of Pressure at Surface.

It is but reasonable to suppose that the ability to sustain this enormous pressure [of the ocean depths] can only be acquired by animals after generations of gradual migrations from shallow waters. Those forms that are brought up by the dredge from the depths of the ocean are usually killed and distorted by the enormous and rapid diminution of pressure in their journey to the surface, and it is extremely probable that shallow-water forms would be similarly killed and crushed out of shape were they suddenly plunged into very deep water.

— HICKSON Fauna of the Deep Sea, ch. 2, p. 21. (A., 1894.) 

Blogger’s note: deep sea creatures are fascinatingly odd. 

1005. ENDS AND MEANS IN SCIENCE: Each Achievement a Step to New Discovery.

The growth of science is organic. That which to-day is an end becomes to-morrow a means to a remoter end. Every new discovery in science is immediately made the basis of other discoveries, or of new methods of investigation. Thus about fifty years ago. Oersted, of Copenhagen, discovered the deflection of a magnetic needle by an electric current; and about the same time Thomas Seebeck, of Berlin, discovered thermo-electricity. These great discoveries were soon afterwards turned to account by Nobili and Melloni in the construction of an instrument which has vastly augmented our knowledge of radiant heat.

— TYNDALL Lectures on Light, lect. 5, p. 179. (A., 1898.) 

1004. ENDOWMENT CONDITIONS EXPERIENCE: Child Learning to Walk; Chimpanzee; Dancing Dog.

It must be clear to any one who compares the erect progression of a child who has just learned to walk with that of a “dancing dog,” or even of a chimpanzee, that while experience makes its acquirement possible in each case, only an organism which is at the same time structurally adapted for erect progression, and possessed of a special coordinating faculty, can turn such experience to full account.

— CARPENTER Mental Physiology, bk. ii, ch. 11, p. 474. (A., 1900.) 

1000. EMBRYO SHAPED BY VIEWLESS ARTIST

The student of Nature wonders the more and is astonished the less, the more conversant he becomes with her operations; but of all the perennial miracles she offers to his inspection, perhaps the most worthy of admiration is the development of a plant or of an animal from its embryo. Examine the recently laid egg of some common animal, such as a salamander or a newt. It is a minute spheroid in which the best microscope will reveal nothing but a structureless sac, enclosing a glairy fluid, holding granules in suspension. But strange possibilities lie dormant in that semi-fluid globule. Let a moderate supply of warmth reach its watery cradle, and the plastic matter undergoes changes so rapid and yet so steady and purpose-like in their succession, that one can only compare them to those operated by a skilled modeler upon a formless lump of clay. As with an invisible trowel, the mass is divided and subdivided into smaller and smaller portions, until it is reduced to an aggregation of granules not too large to build withal the finest fabrics of the nascent organism. And then it is as if a delicate finger traced out the line to be occupied by the spinal column, and molded the contour of the body; pinching up the head at one end, the tail at the other, and fashioning flank and limb into due salamandrine proportions, in so artistic a way that, after watching the process hour by hour, one is almost involuntarily possessed by the notion that some more subtle aid to vision than an achromatic would show the hidden artist, with his plan before him, striving with skilful manipulation to perfect his work.

— HUXLEY Lay Sermons, serm. 12, p. 260. (G. P. P., 1899.) 

997. ELEVATION OF BED OF NILE: Fertility Encroaching upon the Desert.

The bed of the Nile always keeps pace with the general elevation of the soil, and the banks of this river, like those of the Mississippi and its tributaries, are much higher than the flat land at a distance, so that they are seldom covered during the highest inundations. In consequence of the gradual rise of the river’s bed, the annual flood is constantly spreading over a wider area, and the alluvial soil encroaches on the desert, covering, to the depth of six or seven feet, the base of statues and temples which the waters never reached 3,000 years ago. Altho the sands of the Libyan Desert have in some places been drifted into the valley of the Nile, yet these aggressions, says Wilkinson, are far more than counterbalanced by the fertilizing effect of the water which now reaches farther inland towards the desert, so that the number of square miles of arable soil is greater at present than at any previous period.

— LYELL Principles of Geology, bk. ii, ch. 17, p. 262. (A., 1854.)