A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 05

Оглавление

Voltaire. A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 05

FANATICISM

FANCY

FASTI

FATHERS – MOTHERS – CHILDREN

FAVOR

FAVORITE

FEASTS

FERRARA

FEVER

FICTION

FIERTÉ

FIGURE

FIGURED – FIGURATIVE

FIGURE IN THEOLOGY

FINAL CAUSES

FINESSE, FINENESS, ETC

FIRE

FIRMNESS

FLATTERY

FORCE (PHYSICAL)

FORCE – STRENGTH

FRANCHISE

FRANCIS XAVIER

FRANKS – FRANCE – FRENCH

FRAUD

FREE-WILL

FRENCH LANGUAGE

FRIENDSHIP

FRIVOLITY

GALLANT

GARGANTUA

GAZETTE

GENEALOGY

GENESIS

GENII

GENIUS

GEOGRAPHY

GLORY – GLORIOUS

GOAT – SORCERY

GOD – GODS

GOOD – THE SOVEREIGN GOOD, A CHIMERA

GOOD

GOSPEL

GOVERNMENT

GOURD OR CALABASH

GRACE

GRACE (OF)

GRAVE – GRAVITY

GREAT – GREATNESS

GREEK

GUARANTEE

GREGORY VII

Отрывок из книги

Fancy formerly signified imagination, and the term was used simply to express that faculty of the soul which receives sensible objects.

Descartes and Gassendi, and all the philosophers of their day, say that "the form or images of things are painted in the fancy." But the greater part of abstract terms are, in the course of time, received in a sense different from their original one, like tools which industry applies to new purposes.

.....

About the same time, the academicians who went to measure an arc of the meridian in the north, found that at Pello, within the Polar circle, it was necessary to lengthen the pendulum, in order to have the same oscillations as at Paris: consequently weight is greater at the polar circle than in the latitude of France, as it is greater in our latitude than at the equator. Weight being greater in the north, the north was therefore nearer the centre of the earth than the equator; therefore the earth was flattened at the poles.

Never did reasoning and experiment so fully concur to establish a truth. The celebrated Huygens, by calculating centrifugal forces, had proved that the consequent diminution of weight on the surface of a sphere was not great enough to explain the phenomena, and that therefore the earth must be a spheroid flattened at the poles. Newton, by the principles of attraction, had found nearly the same relations: only it must be observed, that Huygens believed this force inherent in bodies determining them towards the centre of the globe, to be everywhere the same. He had not yet seen the discoveries of Newton; so that he considered the diminution of weight by the theory of centrifugal forces only. The effect of centrifugal forces diminishes the primitive gravity on the equator. The smaller the circles in which this centrifugal force is exercised become, the more it yields to the force of gravity; thus, at the pole itself the centrifugal force being null, must leave the primitive gravity in full action. But this principle of a gravity always equal, falls to nothing before the discovery made by Newton, that a body transported, for instance, to the distance of ten diameters from the centre of the earth, would weigh one hundred times less than at the distance of one diameter.

.....