The Multiplication of Effects.
Herbert Spencer, Michael Taylor · 2021
A single force is divided by conflict with matter into forces that widely diverge. In the case lately cited, of a body shattered by violent collision, besides the change of the homogeneous mass into a heterogeneous group of scattered fragments, there is a change of the homogeneous momentum into a group of momenta, heterogeneous in both amounts and directions. This chapter explores how the process of evolution is furthered by this multiplication of effects. An incident force decomposed by the reactions of a body into a group of unlike forces—a uniform force thus reduced to a multiform force—becomes the cause of a secondary increase of multiformity in the body which decomposes it. The multiplication of effects must proceed in geometrical progression. Each stage of evolution must initiate a higher stage. The chapter also explores that a part-cause of Evolution is the multiplication of effects; and that this increases in geometrical progression as the heterogeneity becomes greater.