Muddlers of Science

MR. BREWSTER will have to be more precise as to what part of the "new physics" he accepts and what part he rejects, before we can determine just what our discussion is about. As pointed out in my previous paper, there are large slices of the "new physics" that are not science at all. "Matterless energy" is one, the "annihilation of matter" is another. These are not scientific doctrines, but hopeless fictions. I should like to know just how Mr. Brewster stands on these two phrases.

There is nothing wrong, of course, with the science of physics itself. Our knowledge of the workings of matter is more solidly grounded today than ever before. And it is materialistic throughout. The fault lies in the teachings of a mystical clique in science, whose occultism and visionary ideas are brandished about as a legitimate part of "modern physics."

"Science now knows," says Mr. Brewster, "... that there are quite common forms of energy that are completely dissociated from any sort of matter, forms which, in theory at least, once created, may last a million years completely out of contact with any material thing.' Permit me to state that "science" knows nothing of the sort. Some of our dream-world physicists have talked about such an "energy," just as some of them have talked about "haunted houses," ghostly visitations, and table levitations, but the laboratory worker has discovered no such animal. In dealing with "energy," he knows of it only in terms of the material, or as an activity of matter. All "energy" is found, handled, and tabulated under the materialistic label.

As for Mr. Brewster's contention that matter "may be absolutely wiped out, cease to be matter of any sort, disappear completely from the universe," this occurs only in books. Such "matter" as this is wholly unknown in any physical laboratory. It is quite as fictitious as Mrs. Guppy's flight.

Mr. Brewster's remark that materialism is a system that "explains everything in terms of something that nobody knows anything about" would be an effective reply if true. While we have no "direct experience" of electrons and protons as we have of marbles or apples, and know nothing of what they "are really like" in appearance, they are not so ghostly nor even as invisible as mystics believe. We can trace their tracks on photographic plates. That is more than can be said for the "matterless energy" and ''spiritualized universe" of the Munchausen school. And, essentially important, they are material particles, the proton weighing the eleven-octillionth of an ounce and the electron having a mass about 1/1800 of that of a proton. Here is a material "atom," something that does not belong in a metaphysical world.

Where stands materialism in the light of the "indeterminable" electron? asks Mr. Brewster. Precisely where it stood before, when the electron was unknown. It still stands as the doctrine that all that is, is matter in motion. And the intricacies and complexities of "motions" far down in the atom do not in any way disturb our predictions as to what matter will do under given circumstances. We can still "predict" larger mass movements with certainty.

Every chemical formula is based on definite knowledge of what matter will do. The chemist who compounds nitro-glycerin knows exactly how it will act. The astronomer who predicts an eclipse of the sun or the return of a comet knows how matter will move. The biologist can foretell just what will occur under the Mendelian raw. We know precisely what water will do when brought to the boiling point, it will change into steam. We can predict, in a hundred thousand ways, how groups of protons and electrons will behave. We can send messages and music through the air; Mr. Brewster can talk to me through a copper wire extending from Andover to New York, or even without any wire at all. I myself have addressed "over the air" thousands of listeners I have never seen. And all this was "predictable" independent of the "unpredictable" movement of protons and electrons far down in the atom.

Physics and materialism are essentially the same: each deals with matter in motion. "Without matter there can be no motion, no movement, no phenomena, no "energy" no radiation, no anything -- not even a Mr. Brewster. Or does Mr. Brewster' think otherwise ? If he does, he is eligible for membership in the Old Order of Oriental Occultists.

When our mystical physicists can walk into a non-material laboratory, experiment with matterless apparatus, and convert some nothing into something and something into nothing, it will be time enough to celebrate the collapse of materialism. Every laboratory experiment involves a handling of matter. And that matter, in all its diversified activities, is as much with us today as it ever was.

And the activities of this matter, expressed in terms of "energy", are with us also. "Energy" loses nothing of itself or of its indestructible character through its manifold transformations. "All the life of the universe," writes Jeans, 1 "may be regarded as manifestations of energy masquerading in various forms, and all the changes in the universe as energy running about from one of these forms to the other, but always without altering its total amount. Such is the great law of conservation of energy." If there is a Humpty Dumpty in the picture, it is the smashed egg of mysticism, which all the king's horses and all the king's men can't put together again.
1. The Universe Around Us, p. 97.

In a letter accompanying his article to The Truth Seeker, Mr. Brewster objects to my use of the term "infinitely small" as applied to tiny bodies. All bodies are "finite," he insists -- which is true. Permit me to say, however, that my use of this term has dictionary sanction. I turn to Funk and Wagnall's Practical Standard Dictionary, and read: "Infinitely small: so small as to be incalculable and insignificant for all practical purposes." This is an exact description of sub-atomic particles and the sense in which the term was used.

It is my personal opinion that our mystical scientists have sold Mr. Brewster metaphysical jargon. They have sold it quite as impressively, quite as successfully as Crookes and Lodge and Lombroso sold Spiritualism to the credulous a few decades ago. It is but a short step from séance apparitions and mediumistic claptrap to the mathematical physicists of today, who divide matter (on paper) until it ceases to exist, or who see in sub-atomic exploration the path to a spiritual world.

It is within the memory of many men living that Crookes walked arm-in-arm with a ghost, that Lodge wrote "Raymond" and talked of "spiritual" whiskey-and-sodas, and that Lombroso told stories of shoes that walked:by themselves! Even Zoliner "proved" the "fourth dimension" by means of a spook. That was "modern physics" then; today our transcendental scientists hand us a vacuous universe composed of symbols and equations! In the words of Eddington, "matter and all else that is in the physical world have been reduced to a shadowy symbolism." 2
2. Science and the Unseen World, p 22.

"Modern physicists" have all but lost their last glint of humor. They solemnly assure us now, not only that matter is out of fashion, but that they can count the protons. The "elusive"' protons are not "elusive" to them : they actually tell us how many there are in the universe! If that isn't a "pontifical" bluff, I fail to know the meaning of the term.

If anybody were to presume to tell Mr. Brewster how many grains of sand there are on the beach at Atlantic City, he would be put down at once as a little bit flighty in the head. If Mr. Brewster's best friend were to inform him how many grains of dust are floating about in Grand Central Terminal, he would begin to fear for his friend's mental health. Yet when Sir Arthur Eddington tells us there are 15,747,724,136,275,002,577,605,653,961,181,555,468,044,717,914-,527,116,709,366,231,425,076,185,631,031,296 protons in the universe, we are expected to drop our jaws in amazement in the presence of "modern physics." The oracle of transcendental physics has spoken!

Flubdub like this is not new with the metaphysical school. Eddington himself is essentially a hopeless mystic, whose superstitious utterances in matters of religion are as brilliant as a Kentucky mountaineer's, refined, in part, only by his cultural contacts in the field of science. Men such as Eddington have gummed up more problems in physical science than they have ever solved. I cite him merely as an outstanding type of the occult brood.

As to the question, "how does any Materialist know that thought is not precisely the energy constituent of the atom, and as such, at least potentially, eternal?" the answer is simple: Function cannot survive the organ. Thinking, as a mode of motion, depends on the functioning of the brain and nervous system. No amount of academic tall-talk can refute the argument of the priest Meslier, who in his later years, turned from Catholicism to materialism. "We ridicule,'' writes he, "the simplicity of some nations whose fashion is to bury provisions with the dead --- under the idea that this food might be useful and necessary to them in another life. Is it more ridiculous or more absurd to believe that men will eat after death than to imagine that they will think; that they will have agreeable or disagreeable ideas; that they will enjoy; that they will suffer; that they will be conscious of sorrow or joy when the organs which produce sensations or ideas are dissolved and reduced to dust?"

He who thinks he can prove the indestructibility of thought from the conservation of energy might just as well try to prove that our brains are indestructible because matter is eternal. Matter and energy are both indestructible, but brains and thinking may both be destroyed, the latter even during the life-time of the individual. A blow or a blood-clot will blot out the most brilliant thought in the world, and a man may lie in a coma for days at a time before drawing his last breath.

Mr. Brewster will have to watch his step if he does not wish to be baptized in the hog-wash of "modern physics."

Mysticism In Modern Physics

MATERIALISM has triumphed over every attempt to discredit it on the ground of new discoveries in physics.
-JOSEPH McCABE, The Triumph of Materialism, p. 25.

MY able friend, Edwin Tenney Brewster, raises a pertinent question concerning the present status of materialism. Briefly, he puts the question: "Has materialism been discredited by the new physics?"

The answer, of course, very much depends on what one understands by the "new physics". Today almost anything goes, in a world of four dimensions and "curved" space. Ever since the Einsteinian vogue for verbal quackery arose we have been victimized by words. To the Waldemar Kaempfferts of modern "physics," lump of iron is no longer an aggregation of compact particles but "congealed energy"; to some of our rationalists and freethinkers abroad, calling themselves materialists, matter is "a cluster of behaviors".

How "behaviors" can ''cluster" or otherwise behave so as to become matter, or "energy" can be come "congealed" into an ax-head or a crowbar, is left to the imagination. The tyranny of words still plays havoc with clear thinking.

Actually the "new physics" is not essentially new, nor is it all physics. A good part of it is not even sane or intelligible. On the whole, it is a conglomeration of yoga mysticism and highly diluted science with a generous sprinkling of Berleian metaphysics. Our transcendental physicists do not deal with moving particles of substance in the manner of 19th century materialists, but with a "dematerialized", fast fading universe rapidly being absorbed by a spiritual world. To them, matter is obliterated or is suffering an eternal black-out. In a word, the material universe has been shot from under us.

But has it?

Materialism is defined in the Encyclopedia Britannica as "the theory which regards all the facts of the universe as explainable in terms of matter and motion, and in particular explains all psychical processes by physical and chemical changes in the nervous system."

The early materialists taught a material world, composed of tiny moving particles called "atoms". These were the indestructible bricks of the universe. "The conception that matter is made up of particles or atoms, and that these particles are in a state of ceaseless motion, is to be met with in Hindu and Phoenician philosophy," writes Sir Edward Thorpe. 1 "It was taught by Anaxagoras, Leukippos and Demokritos to the Greeks, and by Lucretius to the Romans."
1. History of Chemistry, p. 20.

The early concept of the atom was that of a hard, impenetrable, bullet-like particle. So far as we know, this may be a perfect description of the ultimate atom, far down. It is not our present idea of what we call the atom in laboratory work. Our present "atom" is a solar system itself, composed tiny material particles revolving around a central mass.

Of what, then, does the present atom consist? "The normal atom", says Jeans, 2 "consists of protons, electrons, and energy, each of which contributes something to its weight". Each part of the atom is material. The "energy" released from the atom in the form of radiation carries weight. All radiation is material. Even A- and B- rays are "material particles", says Jeans.3
2. The Universe Around Us, p. 118.
3. Ibid, p 119.

NO one has improved on Maxwell's concept of "energy". "Energy", says he, 4 "cannot exist except in connection with matter. . . . It has no individual existence, such as that which we attribute to particular portions of matter."
4. Matter and Motion, pp; 165-166.

"Energy" is merely a blanket term or convenient expression for matter at work. Yet it is loosely argued that since matter is reducible in terms of "energy", matter can thereby be destroyed or replaced by "energy". But every erg of "energy" is always identified by mass and weight. These are physical properties. We never find "energy" running around loose like a ghost nor apart from matter. "An erg of energy, in any form", says Eddington, 5 "has a mass of 1.1.10-21 grammes". Wherever we find "energy" we find matter.
5. Stars and Atoms, p. 97

A good deal of verbiage has wrapped itself around the "new physics". Words and phrases are used with little or no regard for their accepted meanings. Some of this is deliberately done to distort the facts. We still hear the "splitting" of the atom, referred to as if it meant the "annihilation" of matter. It means, of course, nothing of the kind.

What is "splitting" the atom? Briefly, separating the positive and negative charges of electricity called protons and electrons, of which the atom is composed. These were isolated by "bombarding" the atom with high power radioactive particles bearing a positive charge. Some of these "bullets", in hitting the nucleus, or positive charge of the atom, were repelled or deflected from their paths. The positive and negative particles of the atom were thereby exposed. The atom had been "split".

The sub-atomic world is material throughout. Our mystical physicists cannot name a single ingredient of the "split" atom that is not material. An electron, says Jeans, 6 is "a plain material particle". The electron has definite mass and weight so has the proton, which, is 1,855 times heavier than the electron. Nor can the mystic escape by saying that since everything is "electricity" We can dispense with matter. "Electricity is material", says Millikan. 7 Wherever we turn, we are confronted by matter.
6. The Universe Around Us, p. 130.
7. The Electron, p 186.

The "splitting" of the atom has in no way discredited the doctrine of materialism. On the contrary, it has strikingly confirmed what materialists have all along maintained, namely, that the ultimate unit of matter would probably be found very far down and that matter is subject to further division. That which passed for the "indivisible" atom in the laboratory would be broken down or found to consist of finer units.

The ancient Greek materialists held these views, which later were ardently championed by the great Roman materialist, Lucretius. Buchner, whose famous "Force and Matter" is a classic of materialism, taught that we must expect a finer division of matter before we reach the indestructible unit, or real atom. Years before Sir J. J. Thomson "split" the atom near the end of the last century, Buchner wrote: 8 "It has also become very probable through recent investigations that the substances heretofore regarded by us as elements or original bodies are nothing of the kind, but are themselves compounds, and that the so-called atoms therefore consist of units of a higher grade, as the molecule does of atoms". In a word, the "splitting" of the atom was here foreseen by a "gross" materialist of the 19th century.
8. Force and Matter, p. 38.

Clearly, then, the "splitting" of the atom has in no way ''exploded" the teaching of materialists. Matter is as indestructible as ever, and is so acknowledged in every text book on chemistry and physics. Not even the most mystical of modern physicists can deny this. Eddington, a leading exponent of transcendental physics, emphatically states: "We have no evidence that the annihilation of matter can occur in nature." 9
9. Stars and Atoms, p. 101

The whole plea for a metaphysical "physics" rests on the erroneous idea that since we cannot predict certain activities far down in the atom, materialism is ruled out. Our inability to register all movements in the sub-atomic world merely means that our implements of detection have not yet been brought to a proper state of precision. We are here dealing with rarefied forms of matter or infinitely small particles, whose complicated motions are beyond the range of our most sensitive instruments. We are facing a world of infinitesimal particles, moving about at terrific speeds and in variable orbits. How small these individual parts are may be visualized from the fact that the hydrogen atom alone weighs only 1.662x10-24 grammes, while the nucleus itself has a diameter of only a millionth of a millionth of an inch.

So far as the parts that make up the "split" atom are concerned, we know that they are material, the central portion, or nucleus bearing a positive charge of electricity, the electron (or electrons) bearing a negative charge. What their patterns or configurations are no one knows. "Neither you nor I", says Jeans, 10 "have any direct experience of either electrons or protons, and no one has so far any inkling of what they are really like." We can visualize their appearance and arrangement only by what occurs or by observing the behavior of the atom.
10. The Universe Around Us, p. 133.

Here lies an Elysian field far the metaphysician and the mystic and a crop of falsehoods. Matter, says the mystic, is becoming more "unpredictable", more "ghostly", more "uncertain", more "unreal", as we delve into its interior. Which is sheer rubbish.

The Heisenberg experiments are frequently cited as damaging to materialism since they are supposed to show there is no stability underlying the physical universe. We cannot depend on what the electrons will do next. This is ludicrous enough. If Heisenberg has knocked "predictability" out of the realm of microcosmic phenomena, he hasn't bothered our laboratory technicians. Real physicists today smile at our sub-atomic mystics and religious ghost chasers. In spite of highly complicated movements within the atom itself, steel girders still stick together, the Empire State Building is where it was before, and you can lease an office in the structure without fearing that it will disappear when your hack is turned. "Predictability" in physics and chemistry is a safe procedure for those who do not follow the rainbow chasers of "modern physics". Matter is still with us, regardless of the grasshopper antics and hopping around of tiny electrons. And it stays put. I myself own a chip of an Egyptian obelisk which is thirty-five centuries old. In spite of its "unpredictable" sub-atomic movements, I predict it will remain a piece of granite for ages to come.

At the World's Fair, General Electric generates 10,000,000 volts of electricity in its exhibit of artificial lightning. "Predictability" in every sense of the word! The charge is under complete control and is child's play in the hands of the operator. Here is physics for you, and no one is disturbed over Heisenberg's headaches as to what may happen next far down in the atom. All physics of a genuine character is based on "predictions" of what matter will do.

As Joseph McCabe wrote me not long ago, "there has been far too much nonsense written about a new physics and new astronomy favoring religion". I quite agree with him, and I lay the blame primarily on the muddlers of science who play up to the religious phantasies of popular credulity.

He who talks of art, and music, and other beautiful things of life as transcending the world of matter forgets that they are grounded in the very matter he affects to despise, and that even a rainbow is as physical as a bar of iron. A great drama, a wonderful painting, a superb statue cause reactions in the human organism as physical or materialistic as the drop of a hammer on our toes. "No one can doubt,"' says Bertrand Russell 11 "that the causes of our emotions when we read Shakespeare or hear Bach are purely physical. Thus we cannot escape the universality of physical causation."
11. The Analysis of Matter.

"Modern physics", writes Jacques Loeb,12 "is mechanistic." And he adds: "Since no discontinuity exists between the matter constituting living and nonliving bodies, biology must also be mechanistic." We must face the fact that all that is, is matter in motion.
12. Mechanistic Science and Metaphysical Romance (Yale Review.)

Real physics today has done something more than "split" the atom. It has blasted metaphysics sky-high and annihilated the pretensions of religion. It is crass mysticism and not "crude materialism" which is committed to the ash heap by modern Science. The doctrines of the mystics are as dry and dead as dinosaur dust.