In science, impulse (TR=64), symbol J, which can be compared to power, or force per unit distance, is the product of a force F and the time t for which it acts:
An impulse, in other words, is force acting over period of time. An impulse causes a momentum change. Not only does the impulse cause a momentum change, it is also, according to the billiard ball model, equal to the momentum change.
Discussion
In circa 1914, American thinker Thomas Dreier was asked, in respect to his we human chemicals motto, “what gave you the impulse to the kind of writing you are doing?”, to which he replied: [1]
“It came to me years ago, when I was loafing in my canoe out in Wisconsin, and found a verse that appealed to me. I wished then that lots of people could read it too, and then it came to me that there was a place for a magazine that would hand on bits of inspiration to people whose lives were too full for them to do much straight reading along those lines. The whole idea of the Thomas Dreier Service grew from that. Of course, a lot that I have done was influenced by Elbert Hubbard, and I am very willing to acknowledge what a power he has been in the formation of my style.”
In 2001, American philosopher James Morgia, in his Life Long Human Values—although Bible soaked—outlined a human molecule description of people and chemical analogy model of human micro interactions to theorize about what he calls “micro abuses”, e.g. verbal child abuse, intonational emotional abuse, etc., to outline a chemical reaction based type of moral fabric model, based on the logic that negative impulses can be stopped similar to an antioxidant neutralizing an oxidant.
Quotes
The following are related quotes:
“What man, what society dare express such sentiments? Seeing that we cannot easily known anyone from his youth up, nor criticize the rise of his activity. How else does character finally prove itself, if it is not formed by the activity of the day, by reflective agencies which counteract each other? Who would venture to determine the value of contingencies, impulses, after-effects? Who dare to estimate the influence of elective affinities? At all events, he who would presume to estimate what man is, must take into consideration what he was, and how he became so. But such barefaced pretension are common, and we have often enough met with them; indeed they are always recurring, and they must be tolerated.”
— Johann Goethe (1831), Letter to Carl Zelter (28 Jun) [4]
“Man is a compound being, composed of two principles—one active, the other passive. The active principle is what is called the mind, the soul; the passive principle is the body. The latter is the material instrument of the former, the means by which it inhabits the planet, acts upon matter, and arrives at a state of positive and practical existence. The soul, or active principle in man, is a whole, composed of a certain number of forces or motors, which we shall call the passions; by the metaphysicians, these forces are variously termed—sentiments, affections, feelings, faculties, impulses, instincts. The passions are spontaneously active and self-determining forces; they are the thinking, feeling, creating principle in man — the source of his acts and works in all spheres, material and spiritual. They are the agents of supreme wisdom, the motors implanted in him by that wisdom to impel him to fulfill his destiny on earth. The human passions were not created at random, were not called into existence without functions and employments having been assigned to them; on the contrary, their functions and uses have been calculated with mathematical precision.”
— Charles Brisbane (1857), Treatise on the Functions of the Human Passions and an Outline of Fourier’s System of Social Science [2]
“In 1809, Goethe printed the most exceptionable of his novels, the Wahlverwandschaften (Elective Affinities), in which the charms and graces of this style are employed in the description of the impulses which spring from the collision of passion and duty in the relations of marriage. By the title of the book, and in the whole spirit of it, he would represent that sexual affinities follow the same inevitable law as chemical affinities, and that humanity struggles impotently against the dictates of nature. Like all his productions, this was suggested by circumstances in his own experience. The work shocked the moral world, in spite of the beauty with which it was written, and to this day tasks the ingenuity of those of his admirers who seek to defend it from attack.”
— George Ripley and Charles Dans (1859), New American Cyclopedia [3]
“Without the adoption of an 'atomic soul' the most common and general phenomena of chemistry are inexplicable. Pleasure and pain, desire and aversion, attraction and repulsion must be all atomic-masses together, the movements of the atoms, which must take place in formation and release of each chemical compound, are only explicable only if we instill in them sensation and volition. What else is due to basically the generally accepted chemical study of the elective affinity of the body than on the unconscious assumption that in fact the attracting and repelling atoms are inspired by certain tendencies, and that they, these feelings or impulses, following too have the will and the ability to move towards each other and away from each other? What Goethe transmits in his 'Elective Affinities' on the highest composite soul life of man, which has full truth.”
— Ernst Haeckel (1875), “On the Procreation of Life-Particles or Perigenesis of Plastidule”
“To foresee or to guide the affinities of each several molecule would be for the physicist as great a step in advance as it would be for the registrar-general could he foresee or guide every impulse to wedlock in the United Kingdom.”
— Frederic Myers (1901), Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death
“To deny our own impulses is to deny the very thing that makes us human.”
— Larry (Lana) Wachowski and Andrew Wachowski (1999), The Matrix (character: Mouse)
See also
● Impelling power
● Impulse theory of happiness
● Trigger action
References
1. Dreier, Thomas. (1915). “An Interview with Thomas Dreier: by Mirian deFord.” The Editor, Vol. 41-42, pgs. 502-04. May 22.
2. (a) Brisbane, Albert. (1857). Treatise on the Functions of the Human Passions and an Outline of Fourier’s System of Social Science. Publisher.
(b) Fourier, Charles. (1857). The Social Destiny of Man: or Theory of the Four Movements: Translated by Henry Clapp, Jr., With a Treatise on the Functions of the Human Passions and An Outline of Fourier’s System of Social Science by Albert Brisbane (note, pgs. 32-33). Robert M. Dewitt.
3. Ripley, George and Dana, Charles D. (1859). The New American Cyclopedia: a Popular Dictionary of General Knowledge, Volume 8 (pg. 337). D. Appleton and Co.
4. Goethe, Johann and Zelter, Carl F. (1892). Goethe’s Letters to Zelter: with Extracts from those of Zelter to Goethe (elective affinities, pgs. 116, 457). G. Bell and Sons.
5. Daintith, John. (2005). Oxford Dictionary of Science. Oxford University Press.
Further reading
● Schoffeniels, Ernest and Mărgineanu, D.G. (1991). Molecular Basis and Thermodynamics of Bioelectrogenesis (ch. 5: The Puzzle of Nerve Impulse Thermodynamics, pgs. 125-42). Springer.
External links
● Impulse (disambiguation) – Wikipedia.
● Impulse (physics) – Wikipedia.
