2. THE NEW THEORY OF MATTER

THE bearing of the newer theories of matter, so fascinating to the modern scientist, may offer an interesting contribution towards the apprehension of the relation of the spiritual to the material order of the world. It is well known that during the past few years a remarkable change has taken place in the attitude of physical science towards the nature and constitution of matter. But probably comparatively few appreciate the far-reaching implications for theological thought these changes carry with them. As to the changes themselves, Sir Oliver Lodge says, 'We appear to be face to face with a phenomenon quite new in the history of the world.' Physics has achieved a marvellous conquest in demonstrating that the primary axiom of science accepted for generations can no longer be accepted. This held that the elementary substances composing the material world are ultimate, immutable, imperishable realities. Lodge voices the unanimous conviction of physicists in assuring us that matter is an evanescent and transient phenomenon, subject to gradual decay and decomposition by the action of its own internal forces and motions.' He and other eminent authorities speak deliberately of the evolution of matter,' once suspected by a few chemists of genius,' as a 1 Romanes Lecture, 1903, p. 18.

2 Ibid., p. 19.

process now going on before our eyes by means of radio-activity. We are literally witnessing the birth of matter. This last of the fairy-tales of science,' which tells of the nativity of nature, presented for our wonder in the story of the researches of distinguished modern physicists like Kelvin, Crooks, Curie, Thomson, Larmor, Rutherford, Soddy, and their associates, touches us with something of the thrill of a revelation. Matter which appears so solid and stable is proved to be no other than rhythmic motion. It is a phenomenon, an appearance only, not the ultimate substance we had supposed. Even atoms themselves, since the days of Lucretius strong in their solid singleness,' have broken up into gleaming hosts of radiant fragments; they explode in myriad activities, and vanish in whirling circles of electrons.' Forty years ago a distinguished physicist could write, 'Every such atom is absolutely dead'; and less than half that time ago the inertia of matter was a primary scientific doctrine. To-day the fine dust of the balance is demonstrated to be alive with radiant energy; mass and inertia, the properties of matter in virtue of which it resists motion and change, are themselves considered modes of motion. Professor Sir J. J. Thomson has proved mathematically that an electrically charged particle in motion exhibits inertia due to the electric charge, and has suggested that all inertia may be electrical in origin-hence the electronic theory of matter." The fact is significant that Dalton's

1 Professor P. Spiller; cf. Stallo, Concepts and Theories of Modern Physics, p. 164.

J. J. Thomson, Electricity and Matter; cf. Redgrove, Matter, Spirit, and the Cosmos, p. 26.

Atomic Theory of Matter, which appeared to have established for all time that the atom was the ultimate, indivisible chemical unit of which all matter was composed, no longer holds the field as an adequate explanation of the nature of matter. This synchronizes with important changes in philosophical and religious thought. We cannot here trace the steps of the experimental processes from the discovery of radiant' matter, in 1873, by Sir W. Crooks, through the researches of Clerk-Maxwell, Hertz, and Becquerel, to the discovery of Röntgen's X-rays, twenty years later, and on to the discovery of radium by M. and Madame Curie in 1901-2. By the more recent brilliant work of Professors Sir J. J. Thomson, Sir J. Larmor, Rutherford, and Mr. Frederick Soddy, the domain of radioactivity has been established and extended. Two or three of the positions reached may be indicated. Matter is not an ultimate reality; it is a product, or at least a phenomenon, of motion. Each atom is a universe of order and force, a system of infinitesimal units of energy,' electrons,' kept in ceaseless and intense movement, a miniature solar system with planets and their satellites revolving with inconceivable rapidity within it. 'Electrons,' these' isolated units of negative electricity,' are the parents of atoms, and usher them into existence as emanations from their secret strength. The inert chemical elements of this too solid earth' thus rise like diaphonous mists ghostlike from a seething, swirling sea as mysterious as that from whose foam Aphrodite was born. Such images, however, are too faint to suggest the rapidity with which these atoms are flung away from the

2

infinitesimal centres of radio-activity. Their speed indeed is as much faster than a cannon-ball as that is faster than a snail's crawl.'1 'Electrons' are so incredibly small that, compared with an atom, if an electron is represented by a sphere an inch in diameter, the diameter of an atom on the same scale is a mile and a half. Or if an atom of matter is represented by the size of this theatre, an electron is represented on the same scale by a printer's full stop.' Yet it is calculated that ' minute scraps of radium scarcely perceptible to the eye' may go on emitting its productive energy with immense violence, at about one-tenth the speed of light,' for thirty thousand years with a loss of only one per cent. of its substance. The fact must also be noted that although the electron is the cause of the atom, the atom and electron are distinct. 'They have quite different properties." That which is produced by radium activity is not radium; it is an atom of one or other of the elements which constitute the materials of which the world is built. The primal 'stuff' out of which matter is composed turns out not to be matter at all. It is motion. Everything is movement. The material. out of which the world is built is the manifestation of one vast energy for ever changing its form and progressing in its manifestations. Sir J. J. Thomson may be quoted as summing up a situation the modern physicists are justifying. 'Matter is just a collection of positive and negative units of electricity; and the forces which hold atoms and molecules together, the properties which

"Lodge, Romanes Lecture, 1903, p. 16.

Ibid., pp. 17, 21.

2

* Ibid., p. 9. Redgrove, op. cit., p. 103.

differentiate one kind of matter from another, all have their origin in the electrical forces exerted by positive and negative units of electricity, grouped in different ways in atoms of different elements.' Mr. Whetham writes,' The electron is identical with the sub-atom which is common to all the different chemical elements, and forms the universal basis of matter. Matter . is an electrical manifestation; and electricity is a state of strain in a universal medium.' It seems indeed as though we had reached a scientific demonstration of Schelling's dictum that matter is precipitated spirit.'

One further point of importance in the new theory of matter should be noticed. This is the hypothesis concerning the origin of the electrons.' They are believed to arise as the expression of some singularity in the universal ether '—a ring,' or 'knot,' or 'twist' in the ether. The electron 'must be in whole or in part a nucleus of intrinsic strain in the ether,' says Sir Joseph Larmor. It is this limitless universal medium, ether, which is to all matter what the ocean is to shells or conglomerates built out of its dissolved contents.' And yet we are told by Mr. Whetham that the ⚫ intrinsic strain in the ether,' which to the physicist is the ultimate origin of matter, is not a part of the ether separated for ever from the rest. The ether is stagnant, and 'the sturdy ghosts which constitute matter float to and fro through it as waves pass over the surface of the sea.'' The etheris prior to matter, and therefore not necessarily expressible

1 The Recent Development of Physical Science, p. 282.

2 Ibid., p. 282.