To conclude, we see by
this Instance, how much Experiments may conduce to the regulating of
_Philosophical notions_. For if the most Acute _Des Cartes_ had applied
himself experimentally to have examined what substance it was that caused
that shining of the falling Sparks struck from a Flint and a Steel, he
would certainly have a little altered his _Hypothesis_, and we should have
found, that his Ingenious Principles would have admitted a very plausible
Explication of this _Phaenomenon_; whereas by not examining so far as he
might, he has set down an Explication which Experiment do's contradict.
But before I leave this Description, I must not forget to take notice of
the Globular form into which each of these is most curiously formed. And
this _Phaenomenon_, as I have elsewhere more largely shewn, proceeds from a
propriety which belongs to all kinds of fluid Bodies more or less, and is
caused by the Incongruity of the Ambient and included Fluid, which so acts
and modulates each other, that they acquire, as neer as is possible, a
_spherical_ or _globular_ form, which propriety and several of the
_Phaenomena_ that proceed from it, I have more fully explicated in the
sixth Observation.
One Experiment, which does very much illustrate my present Explication, and
is in it self exceeding pretty, I must not pass by: And that is a way of
making small _Globules_ or _Balls_ of Lead, or Tin, as small almost as
these of Iron or Steel, and that exceeding easily and quickly, by turning
the filings or chips of those Metals also into perfectly round _Globules_.
Pages:
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153