Abstract
THIS work is a series of six lectures published posthumously by the author's son. The lectures are of a purely popular character, and their object throughout is to maintain that science is, so to speak, an intellectual handmaiden to Christianity. The arguments, or rather illustrations, are all drawn from the domain of physics and astronomy, of which the writer was himself so distinguished a cultivator, and every page glows with the fervour of a deeply religious mind. Indeed, we may question whether there is not rather too much of this, even in view of the emotional effects' which it seems to be the main object of the speaker to produce. The intellectual or argumentative object throughout is to show that the “ideality in the physical sciences” points to ideation in the source of the physical universe, or, to quote the concluding paragraph: “Judge the tree by its fruit. Is this magnificent display of ideality a human delusion, or is it a divine record? The heavens and the earth have spoken to declare the glory of God. It is not a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing. It is the power of an infinite imagination, signifying IMMORTALITY.”
Ideality in the Physical Science.
By Benjamin Peirce. (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1881.)
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[Book Reviews]. Nature 26, 104 (1882). https://doi.org/10.1038/026104a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/026104a0