HAPTIC AGENCY FOR VENUE CORRELATION |
| DIRECTOR Providencia Tinkler |
ABOUT
To many, however, of the cases we have been considering, the term correlation may be applied in a more strict accordance with its original sense: thus, with regard to the forces of electricity and magnetism in a dynamic state, we cannot electrise a substance without magnetising it — we cannot magnetise it without electrising it: — each molecule, the instant it is affected by one of these forces, is affected by the other; but, in transverse directions, the forces are inseparable and mutually dependent —correlative, but not identical.
The evolution of one force or mode of force into another has induced many to regard all the different natural agencies as reducible to unity, and as resulting from one force which is the efficient cause of all the others: thus, one author writes to prove that electricity is the cause of every change in matter; another, that chemical action is the cause of everything; another, that heat is the universal cause, and so on. If, as I have stated it, the true expression of the fact is, that each mode of force is capable of producing the others, and that none of them can be produced but by some other as an anterior force, then any view which regards either of them as abstractedly the efficient cause of all the rest, is erroneous: the view has, I believe, arisen from a confusion between the abstract or generalised meaning of the term cause, and its concrete or special sense; the word itself being indiscriminately used in both these senses.
Another confusion of terms has arisen, and has, indeed, much embarrassed me in enunciating the propositions put forth in these pages, on account of the imperfection of scientific language; an imperfection in great measure unavoidable, it is true, but not the less embarrassing. Thus, the words light, heat, electricity, and magnetism, are constantly used in tAvo senses—viz. that of the force producing, or the subjective idea of force or power, and of the effect produced, or the objective phenomenon. The word motion, indeed, is only applied to the effect, and not to the force, and the term chemical affinity is generally applied to the force, and not to the effect; but the other four terms are, for want of a distinct terminology, applied indiscriminately to both.
I may have occasionally used the same word at one time in a subjective, at another in an objective sense; all I can say is, that this cannot be avoided without a neology, which I have not the presumption to introduce, or the authority to enforce. Again, the use of the term forces in the plural might be objected to by those who do not attach to the term force the notion of a specific agency, but of one universal power associated with matter, of which its various phenomena are but diversely modified effects.