Page:Experimentsnotes00boyl.pdf/76

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38
Of the Mechanical Origine

when both are plung'd into it, one of them shall have been newly held to the fire, and the other be benummed with frost. And indeed the custom of speaking has introduced an ambiguity into the word Cold, which often occasions mistakes, not easily without much attention and sometimes circumlocution also to be avoided; since usually by Cold is meant that which immediately affects the sensory of him that pronounces a body Cold, whereas sometimes 'tis taken in a more general notion for such a Negation or Imminution of motion, as though it operates not perceivably on our senses, does yet upon other bodies; and sometimes also it is taken (which is perhaps the more Philosophical sense) for a perception, made in and by the mind, of the alteration produced in the Corporeal Organs by the operation of that, whatever it be, on whose account a body is found to be cold.

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