Book contents
- Frontmatter
- PREFACE
- Contents
- PART I THE UNKNOWABLE
- PART II LAWS OF THE KNOWABLE
- I LAWS IN GENERAL
- II THE LAW OF EVOLUTION
- III THE LAW OF EVOLUTION (CONTINUED)
- IV THE CAUSES OF EVOLUTION
- V SPACE, TIME, MATTER, MOTION, AND FORCE
- VI THE INDESTRUCTIBILITY OF MATTER
- VII THE CONTINUITY OF MOTION
- VIII THE PERSISTENCE OF FORCE
- IX THE CORRELATION AND EQUIVALENCE OF FORCES
- X THE DIRECTION OF MOTION
- XI THE RHYTHM OF MOTION
- XII THE CONDITIONS ESSENTIAL TO EVOLUTION
- XIII THE INSTABILITY OF THE HOMOGENEOUS
- XIV THE MULTIPLICATION OF EFFECTS
- XV DIFFERENTIATION AND INTEGRATION
- XVI EQUILIBRATION
XV - DIFFERENTIATION AND INTEGRATION
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 August 2010
- Frontmatter
- PREFACE
- Contents
- PART I THE UNKNOWABLE
- PART II LAWS OF THE KNOWABLE
- I LAWS IN GENERAL
- II THE LAW OF EVOLUTION
- III THE LAW OF EVOLUTION (CONTINUED)
- IV THE CAUSES OF EVOLUTION
- V SPACE, TIME, MATTER, MOTION, AND FORCE
- VI THE INDESTRUCTIBILITY OF MATTER
- VII THE CONTINUITY OF MOTION
- VIII THE PERSISTENCE OF FORCE
- IX THE CORRELATION AND EQUIVALENCE OF FORCES
- X THE DIRECTION OF MOTION
- XI THE RHYTHM OF MOTION
- XII THE CONDITIONS ESSENTIAL TO EVOLUTION
- XIII THE INSTABILITY OF THE HOMOGENEOUS
- XIV THE MULTIPLICATION OF EFFECTS
- XV DIFFERENTIATION AND INTEGRATION
- XVI EQUILIBRATION
Summary
§ 123. The general interpretation of Evolution is far from being completed in the preceding chapters. We must contemplate its changes under yet another aspect, before we can form a definite conception of the process constituted by them. Though the laws already set forth, furnish a key to the rearrangement of parts which Evolution exhibits, in so far as it is an advance from the uniform to the multiform; they furnish no key to this re-arrangement in so far as it is an advance from the indefinite to the definite. On studying the actions and re-actions everywhere going on, we have found it to follow inevitabty from a certain primordial truth, that the homogeneous must lapse into the heterogeneous, and that the heterogeneous must become more heterogeneous; but we have not discovered why the differently-affected parts of any simple whole, become clearly marked off from each other, at the same time that they become unlike. Thus far no reason has been assigned why there should not ordinarily arise a vague chaotic heterogeneity, in place of that orderly heterogeneity displayed in Evolution. It still remains to find out the cause of that integration of parts which accompanies their differentiation—that gradually-completed segregation of like units into a group, distinctly separated from neighbouring groups which are severally made up of other kinds of units. The rationale will be conveniently introduced by a few instances in which we may watch this segregative process taking place.
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- Information
- First Principles , pp. 416 - 439Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009First published in: 1862