Post 24761
Created:
Modified:
Our senses reveal to us but one kind of motion–mass motion–the change of place of visible bodies. But there is another motion in all matter which our senses do not reveal to us as motion–molecular vibration, or the thrill of the atoms. At the heart of the most massive rock this whirl of the atoms or corpuscles is going on. If our ears were fine enough to hear it, probably every rock and granite monument would sing, as did Memnon, when the sun shone upon it. This molecular vibration is revealed to us as heat, light, sound, electricity. Heat is only a mode of this invisible motion of the particles of matter. Mass motion is quickly converted into this molecular motion when two bodies strike each other. May not life itself be the outcome of a peculiar whirl of the ultimate atoms of matter?
Says Professor Gotch, as quoted by J. Arthur Thomson in his “Introduction to Science”: “To the thought of a scientific mind the universe with all its suns and worlds is throughout one seething welter of modes of motion, playing in space, playing in ether, playing in all existing matter, playing in all living things, playing, therefore, in ourselves.” Physical science, as Professor Thomson says, leads us from our static way of looking at things to the dynamic way. It teaches us to regard the atom, not as a fixed and motionless structure, like the bricks in a wall, but as a centre of ever-moving energy; it sees the whole universe is in a state of perpetual flux, a flowing stream of creative energy out of which life arises as one of the manifestations of this energy.
When we have learned all that science can tell us about the earth, is it not more rather than less wonderful? When we know all it can tell us about the heavens above, or about the sea, or about our own bodies, or about a flower, or a bird, or a tree, or a cloud, are they less beautiful and wonderful? The mysteries of generation, of inheritance, of cell life, are rather enhanced by science.