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As, moreover, the principle of the conservation of energy has been assumed to admit of no exception, there is not an atom, either in the nervous system or in the whole of the universe, whose position is not determined by the sum of the mechanical actions which the other atoms exert upon it. And the mathematician who knew the position of the molecules or atoms of a human organism at a given moment, as well as the position and motion of all the atoms in the universe capable of influencing it, could calculate with unfailing certainty the past, present and future actions of the person to whom this organism belongs, just as one predicts an astronomical phenomenon. [ft1: On this point see Lange, History of Materialism, Vol. ii, Part ii.] (Bergson 144b.c/d, emphasis mine)Comme d'ailleurs le principe de la conservation de l'énergie a été supposé inflexible, il n'y a point d'atome, ni dans le système nerveux ni dans l'immensité de l'univers, dont la position ne soit déterminée par la somme des actions mécaniques que les autres atomes exercent sur lui. Et le mathématicien qui connaîtrait la position des molécules ou atomes d'un organisme humain à un moment donné, ainsi que la position et le mouvement de tous les atomes de l'univers capables de l'influencer, calculerait avec une précision infaillible les actions passées, présentes et futures de la personne à qui cet organisme appartient, comme on prédit un phénomène astronomique. [ftI: Voir à ce propos Lange, Histoire du matérialisme, trad. française, tome II, 2e partie.] (110c.d/d, emphasis mine)
a mind which should know for a given very small period of time the position and movement of all the atoms in the universe, would also necessarily be in a position to derive from these, in accordance with the laws of mechanics, the whole past and future. It could, by an appropriate treatment of its world-formula, tell us who was the Iron Mask, or how the 'President' came to grief. As the astronomer predicts the day on which, after many years, a comet again appears in the vault of heaven from the depths of space, so this 'mind' would read in its equations the day when the Greek cross will glitter from the mosque of Sophia or when England will burn its last lump of coal. (Du Bois-Reymond, qtd in Lange 308b.c, emphasis mine)
Crystal and organism differ from each other as a mere building differs from a factory with its engines and machinery, into which raw material pours, and from which manufactures, waste materials, and refuse pour out again. We have here nothing more than an "extremely difficult mechanical problem." The richest nature-picture of a tropical forest offers to analysing science nothing but matter in motion. (310a)
"The astronomical knowledge of the brain, the highest knowledge we can attain, reveals to us nothing but matter in motion." But if we suppose that from this knowledge certain intellectual processes or dispositions, as memory, the association of ideas, and so on, might become intelligible, that too is delusion; we only learn certain conditions of intellectual life, but do not learn how the intellectual life is itself developed from these conditions. "What conceivable connection exists between, certain movements of certain atoms in my brain on the one hand, and on the other the to me original and not further definable but undeniable facts, 'I feel pain, feel pleasure; I take something sweet, smell roses, hear organ-sounds, see something red,' and the just as immediately resulting certainty, 'therefore I am'? . . . It is impossible to see how from the co-operation of the atoms consciousness can result. Even if I were to attribute consciousness to the atoms, that would neither explain consciousness in general, nor would that in any way help us to understand the unitary consciousness of the individual." (Du Bois-Reymond qtd in Lange 311a-d, emphasis mine).
The muscular movements are set free by nervous activity; this arises from the functions of the brain, and these are entirely determined by the structure of the brain, by the sensory conductors and by the atomic movements of molecular changes and so on, under the influence of the centripetal nervous activity. (315cd)
We must quite realise that the law of the conservation of energy can undergo no exception in the interior of the brain without becoming wholly meaningless, and we must rise to the conclusion therefore that the whole activity of man, individuals as well as peoples, might go on, as it actually does go on, without the occurring in any single individual of anything resembling a thought or a sensation. (315-316, emphasis mine)
But as to this material and its elements sensation and the consciousness of motor impulses we must carry out, in the strictest sense of the word, the law of the conservation of energy. (154c, Book 2, Section 3, Chapter 2, emphasis mine)
we cannot regard the 'thought' as a separate product in addition to the material phenomena, but that the subjective state of the sentient individual is' at the same time to external observation an objective one, a molecular movement. This objective state must, on the law of the conservation of energy, fit into the unbroken causal series. (160a, emphasis mine)
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