NATURAL PHILOSOPHY is commonly defined to be that art or science which considers the powers and properties of natural bodies, and their mutual actions on each other. MORAL PHILOSOPHY relates to whatever concerns the mind and intellect; NATURAL PHILOSOPHY, on the other hand, is only concerned with the materal part of the creation. The MORALIST's business is to enquire into the nature of virtue, the causes and effects of vice, to propose remedies for it, and to point out the mode of attaining happiness. The NATURALIST, on the contrary, has nothing to do with spirit; his business is confined to body or matter. The first and principal part of this science is to collect all the manifest and sensible appearances of things, and reduce them into a body of Natural History. Natural Philosophy differs from Natural History in it's appropriated sense; the business of the latter is only to observe the appearances of natural bodies separately, and from these appearances to class them with other bodies to which they are allied. Natural Philosophy goes farther, and recites the action of two or more bodies upon each other; and tho' it can neither investigate nor point out the causes of those effects, whatever they be, yet from mathematical reasoning combined with experience, it can be demonstrated, that in such circumstances such effects must always take place. Natural Philosophy, till lately, has been divided into four parts, commonly called the FOUR BRANCHES, viz. 1, Mechanics ; 2, Hydrostatics; 3, Optics; and 4, Astronomy; and these again subdivided into many parts. Modern discoveries have added, however, two more parts; viz.,1,Magnetism; and 2, Electricity and Galvanism. |