Man or Matter Part 22

Unlike electricity, magnetism was first known in the form of its natural occurrence, namely as a property of certain minerals. If we follow the same course which led us to start our study of electricity with the primitive process of generating it, we shall turn now to the basic phenomenon produced by a magnetic field already in existence.

(Only when we have learnt all we can from this, shall we proceed to ask how magnetism comes into being.) Obviously, we shall find this basic phenomenon in the effect of a magnet on a heap of iron filings.

Let us, to begin with, compare a ma.s.s of solid iron with the same quant.i.ty of it in powdered form. The difference is that the powder lacks the binding force which holds the solid piece together. Now lei us expose the powdered iron to the influence of a magnet. At once a certain ordering principle takes hold of the single particles. They no longer lie at random and unrelated, apart from the inconspicuous gravitational effect they exert on one another, but are drawn into a coherent whole, thus acquiring properties resembling those of an ordinary piece of solid matter.

Read thus, the phenomenon tells us that a part of s.p.a.ce occupied by a magnetic field has qualities which are otherwise found only where a coherent solid ma.s.s is present. A magnetic piece of solid iron, therefore, differs from a non-magnetic piece by giving rise in its surroundings to dynamic conditions which would otherwise exist only in its interior. This picture of the relatedness of magnetism to solidity is confirmed by the fact that both are cancelled by heat, and increased by cold.2

By its magnetic properties iron thus reveals itself as a substance capable of a.s.suming the condition of solid matter to a degree surpa.s.sing ordinary solidity. As an exceptional kind of metal it forms the counter-pole to mercury, in which the solid-fluid condition characteristic of all metallic matter is as much shifted towards the fluid as in iron it is to the solid. (Note in this respect the peculiar resistance of iron to the liquefying effect which mercury has on the other metals.)

This picture of magnetism enables us to understand at once why it must occur together with heat at the place where an electric polarity has been cancelled by the presence of a conductor. We have seen that electricity is levity coupled in a peculiar way with gravity; it is polarized levity (accompanied by a corresponding polarization of gravity). An electric field, therefore, always has both qualities, those of levity and of gravity. We saw a symptom of this in electrical attraction and repulsion, so called; the attraction, we found, was due to negative density, the repulsion to positive density, imparted to s.p.a.ce by the electrical fields present there. Now we see that when, through the presence of a conductor, the electrical field round the two opposing poles vanishes, in its place two other fields, a thermal and a magnetic, appear. Clearly, one of them represents the levity-part, the other the gravity-part, of the vanished electric field. The whole process reminds one of combustion through which the ponderable and imponderable parts, combined in the combustible substance, fall apart and appear on the one hand as heat, and on the other as oxidized substance ('ash'). Yet, between these two manifestations of heat there is an essential qualitative difference.

Although, from our view-point, magnetism represents only one 'half of a phenomenon, the other half of which is heat, we must not forget that it is itself a bipolar force. Thus, despite its apparent relation to gravity it does not represent, as gravity does, one pole of a primary polarity, with heat as the other pole. Rather must it carry certain qualities of levity which, together with those of gravity, appear in a polarically opposite manner at its two poles. (Details of this will be shown later when we come to investigate the individual qualities of the two poles of magnetism and electricity.) Hence the heat that forms the counterpart to magnetism cannot be pure levity either. As the result of a certain coupling with gravity, it too has somehow remained polarically split.

This can easily be seen by considering the following. Unlike the levity-gravity polarity, in which one pole is peripheral and the other point-centred, both Doles of the electrical polarity are point-centred; both are located in physical s.p.a.ce, and thereby determine a definite direction within this s.p.a.ce. It is this direction which remains a characteristic of both the magnetic and the thermal fields. The direction of the thermal field as much as that of the magnetic is determined by its having as its axis the conductor joining the poles of the antecedent electrical field. Both fields supplement each other in that the thermal radiation forms the radii which belong to the circular magnetic lines-of-force surrounding the conductor.3

Our picture of the process which is commonly called an electric current is now sufficiently complete to allow us to make a positive statement concerning the direction in which it takes place. Let us once more sum up: In order that this process may occur, there must be present in an electrically excited part of s.p.a.ce a body which does not suffer the particular polarization of s.p.a.ce bound up with such a field. As a result, the electrical field disappears, and in place of it appear a thermal field and a magnetic field, both having as their axis the line connecting the two poles. Each of them spreads out in a direction at right angles to this fine. Obviously, therefore, it is in this radial direction that the transformation of the electrical into the thermo-magnetic condition of s.p.a.ce must take place.

This picture of the electro-thermo-magnetic happening, as regards its direction, is in complete accord with the result obtained (as indicated earlier) by the mathematical treatment of high-frequency phenomena.

Once more we see that quite primitive observations, when properly read, lead to findings for which scientific thought had to wait until they were forced on it by the progress of experimental technique - as even then science was left without a uniformly valid picture of the dynamic behaviour of electricity.

Further, we can now see that when we apply electricity to practical purposes, we are in fact seldom using electricity itself, but other forces (that is, other combinations of gravity and levity) which we make effective by making electricity disappear. The same is true of most of the methods of measuring electricity. As a rule, the force which sets the instrument in motion is not electricity but another force (magnetism, heat, etc.) which appears in the place of the vanishing electricity. Thus the so-called intensity of an electric current is actually the intensity with which the electricity in question disappears! Electricity serves us in our machines in the same way that food serves a living organism: it gets itself digested, and what matters is the resulting secondary product.

Just as alterations in the electrical condition of s.p.a.ce give rise to the appearance of a magnetic field, any alteration of the magnetic state of s.p.a.ce gives rise to the appearance of an electrical field.

This process is called electromagnetic induction. With its discovery, the generation of electricity through friction and in the galvanic way was supplemented by a third way. By this means the practical use of electricity on a large scale became possible for the first time. If our picture of the two earlier processes of generating electricity is correct, then this third way must also fit into the picture, although in this case we have no longer to do with any direct atomization of physical matter. Our picture of magnetism will indeed enable us to recognize in electromagnetic induction the same principle on which we found the two other processes to rest.

Magnetism is polarized gravity. Hence it has the same characteristic of tending always to maintain an existent condition. In bodies subject to gravity, this tendency reveals itself as their inertia. It is the inertia inherent in magnetism which we employ when using it to generate electricity. The simplest example is when, by interrupting a 'primary current', we induce a 'secondary current' in a neighbouring circuit. By the sudden alteration of the electric condition on the primary side, the magnetic condition of the surrounding s.p.a.ce is exposed to a sudden corresponding change. Against this the magnetic field 'puts up' a resistance by calling forth, on the secondary side, an electrical process of such direction and strength that the entire magnetic condition remains first unaltered and then, instead of changing suddenly, undergoes a gradual transformation which ideally needs an infinite time for its accomplishment (asymptotic course of the exponential curve). This principle rules every process of electromagnetic induction, whatever the cause and direction of the change of the magnetic field.

We know that electromagnetic induction takes place also when a conductor is moved across a magnetic field in such a way that, as the technical term goes, it 'cuts' the field's lines of force. Whereas the process discussed above is employed in the transformer, this latter process is used in generation of electricity by dynamo. We have seen that a magnetic field imparts to the relevant part of s.p.a.ce qualities of density which otherwise prevail only in the interior of solid ma.s.ses. We remember further that the appearance of electricity, in the two other modes of generating it, is caused by the loosening of the coherence of the material substance. A similar loosening of the coherence of the magnetic field takes place when its field-lines are cut by the movement of the conductor across it. Just as heat occurs when we move a solid object through a liquid, electricity occurs when we move a conductor across a magnetic field. In each case we interfere with an existing levity-gravity relationship.

Having established thus far the picture of both electricity and magnetism which shows each as an outcome of certain levity-gravity interactions, we now ask how, in particular, negative and positive electricity on the one hand and north and south magnetism on the other are determined by these interactions. Let us again begin with electricity.

We remember that Galvani was led to his observations by the results of Walsh's study of the electric fishes. While Galvani clung to the view that in his own experiments the source of the electrical force lay within the animal bodies, Volta saw the fallacy of that. He then conceived the idea of imitating with purely inorganic substances the set-up which Galvani had come upon by accident. The paradoxical result - as he himself noticed with surprise - was that his apparatus turned out to be a close replica of the peculiar organ with which the electric fishes are endowed by nature. We must now take a closer view of this organ.

The electric organ of such a fish consists of many thousands of little piles, each made up of a very great number of plates of two different kinds, arranged in alternating layers. The two kinds differ in substance: in one case the plate is made from a material similar to that present in the nervous system of animals; in the other the resemblance is to a substance present in the muscular system, though only when the muscles are in a state of decay. In this way the two opposing systems of the animal body' seem to be brought here into direct contact, repeated many thousands of times.

In the electric fishes, accordingly, sensation and will are brought into a peculiar interrelation. For the will-pole is related to its bodily foundation in a manner which otherwise obtains only between the nervous system and the psychological processes co-ordinated with it.

These fishes then have the capacity to send out force-currents which produce in other animals and in man 'concussion of the limbs', or in extreme cases paralysis and even death. Through describing the process in this way we realize that electricity appears here as metamorphosed animal will, which takes this peculiar form because part of the animal's volitional system is a.s.similated to its sensory system in an exceptional manner.

It is known to-day that what nature reveals so strikingly in the case of the electric fish, is nothing but the manifestation of a principle at work in the bodies of all beings endowed with sensation and volition - in corporeal terms, with the duality of a nervous and a muscular system - and therefore at work also in the human body. Observation has shown that the activities of these two systems in man and animal are accompanied by the occurrence of different electric potentials in different parts of the body. Plate A, Fig. iii, shows the distribution of the two polar electric forces in the human body. The bent lines in the diagram stand for curves of equal electric potential. The straight line between them is the neutral zone. As might be expected, this line runs through the heart. What seems less obvious is its slanting position. Here the asymmetry, characteristic of the human body, comes to expression.

If we remember that the nervous system represents the salt-pole, and the metabolic system the sulphur-pole, of the human organism, and if we take into account the relationship between levity and gravity at the two poles, we can see from the distribution of the two electricities that the coupling of levity and gravity at the negative pole of the electrical polarity is such that levity descends into gravity, while at the positive pole gravity rises into levity. Negative electricity therefore must have somehow a 'spherical' character, and positive electricity a 'radial'.

This finding is fully confirmed by electrical phenomena in the realm of nature most remote from man (though it was an effort to solve the enigma of man which led to the discovery of this realm). Since Crookes's observations of the behaviour of electricity in a vacuum it is common knowledge that only the negative kind of electricity occurs as a freely radiating force (though it retains some properties of inertia), whereas positive electricity seems to be much more closely bound to minute particles of ponderable matter. Here again we find gravity-laden levity on the negative side, levity-raised gravity on the positive.

The same language is spoken by the forms in which the luminous phenomena appear at the two poles of a Crookes tube. Fig. i on Plate A represents the whole phenomenon as far as such a diagram allows. Here we see on the positive side radial forms appear, on the negative side planar-spherical forms. As symbols of nature's script, these forms tell us that cosmic periphery and earthly centre stand in a polar relation to each other at the two ends of the tube. (Our optical studies will later show that the colours which appear at the anode and cathode are also in complete accord with this.)

At this point in our discussion it is possible to raise, without risk of confusing the issue, the question of the distribution of the two electric forces over the pairs of substances concerned in the generation of electricity both by friction and in the galvanic way.

This distribution seems to contradict the picture to which the foregoing observations have led us, for in both instances the 'sulphurous' substances (resin in one, the n.o.bler metals in the other) become bearers of negative electricity; while the 'saline' substances (gla.s.s and the corrosive metals) carry positive electricity. Such a criss-crossing of the poles-surprising as it seems at first sight - is not new to us. We have met it in the distribution of function of the plant's organs of propagation, and we shall meet a further instance of it when studying the function of the human eye. Future investigation will have to find the principle common to all instances in nature where such an interchange of the poles prevails.

While the electric field arising round an electrified piece of matter does not allow any recognition of the absolute characteristics of the two opposing electrical forces, we do find them revealed by the distribution of electricity in the human body. Something similar holds good for magnetism. Only, to find the phenomena from which to read the absolute characteristics of the two sides of the magnetic polarity, we must not turn to the body of man but to that of the earth, one of whose characteristics it is to be as much the bearer of a magnetic field as of gravitational and levitational fields. There is significance in the fact that even to-day, when the tendency prevails to look for causes of natural phenomena not in the macrocosmic expanse, but in the microscopic confines of s.p.a.ce, the two poles of magnetism are named after the magnetic poles of the earth. It indicates the degree to which man's feeling instinctively relates magnetism to the earth as a whole.

In our newly developed terminology we may say that magnetism, as a polarity of the second order, represents a field of force both of whose poles are situated within finite s.p.a.ce, and that in the macro-telluric mother-field this situation is such that the axis of this field coincides more or less with the axis of the earth's physical body. Thus the magnetic polarization of the earth as a letter in nature's script bids us rank it alongside other phenomena which in their way are an expression of the earth's being polarized in the north-south direction.

The Austrian geographer, E. Suess, in his great work The Countenance of the Earth, first drew attention to the fact that an observer approaching the earth from outer s.p.a.ce would be struck by the onesided distribution and formation of the earth's continents. He would notice that most of the dry land is in the northern hemisphere, leaving the southern hemisphere covered mainly with water. In terms of the basic elementary qualities, this means that the earth is predominantly 'dry'

in its northern half, and 'moist' in its southern.

In this fact we have a symbol which tells us that the earth represents a polarity of the second order, with its 'salt'-pole in the north and its 'sulphur'-pole in the south. Hence the magnetism called 'North'

must be of saline and therefore spherical nature, corresponding to the negative pole in the realm of electricity, while 'South' magnetism must be of sulphurous - i.e. radial-nature, corresponding to positive electricity. Moreover, this must hold good equally for the fields of magnetic force generated by naturally magnetic or artificially magnetized pieces of iron. For the circ.u.mstance that makes a piece of matter into a magnet is simply that part of the general magnetic field of the earth has been drawn into it. Of especial interest in this respect is the well-known dependence of the direction of an electrically produced magnetic field on the position of the poles of the electric field.

The insight we have now gained into the nature of electricity has led us to the realization that with every act of setting electromagnetic energies in motion we interfere with the entire levity-gravity balance of our planet by turning part of the earth's coherent substance into cosmic 'dust'. Remembering our picture of radioactivity, in which we recognized a sign of the earth's old age, we may say that whenever we generate electricity we speed up the earth's process of cosmic ageing.

Obviously this is tremendously enhanced by the creation of artificial radioactivity along the lines recently discovered, whereby it has now become possible to trans.m.u.te chemical elements into one another, or even to cancel altogether their gravity-bound existence.

To see things in this light is to realize that with our having become able to rouse electricity and magnetism from their dormant state and make them work for us, a gigantic responsibility has devolved upon mankind. It was man's fate to remain unaware of this fact during the first phase of the electrification of his civilization; to continue now in this state of unawareness would spell peril to the human race.

The fact that modern science has long ceased to be a 'natural' science is something which has begun to dawn upon the modern scientific researcher himself. What has thus come to him as a question finds a definite answer in the picture of electricity we have been able to develop. It is again Eddington who has drawn attention particularly to this question: see the chapter, 'Discovery or Manufacture?' in his Philosophy of Physical Science. It will be appropriate at this point to recall his remarks, for they bear not only on the outcome of our own present discussion, but also, as the next chapter will show, on the further course of our studies.

Eddington starts by asking: 'When Lord Rutherford showed us the atomic nucleus, did he find it or did he make it?' Whichever answer we give, Eddington goes on to say, makes no difference to our admiration for Rutherford himself. But it makes all the difference to our ideas on the structure of the physical universe. To make clear where the modern physicist stands in this respect, Eddington uses a striking comparison.

If a sculptor were to point in our presence to a raw block of marble saying that the form of a human head was lying hidden in the block, 'all our rational instinct would be roused against such an anthropomorphic speculation'. For it is inconceivable to us that nature should have placed such a form inside the block. Roused by our objection, the artist proceeds to verify his theory experimentally - 'with quite rudimentary apparatus, too: merely using a chisel to separate the form for our inspection, he triumphantly proves his theory.'

'Was it in this way', Eddington asks, 'that Rutherford rendered concrete the nucleus which his scientific imagination had created?' One thing is certain: 'In every physical laboratory we see ingeniously devised tools for executing the work of sculpture, according to the designs of the theoretical physicist. Sometimes the tool slips and carves off an odd-shaped form which he had not expected. Then we have a new experimental discovery,'

To this a.n.a.logy Eddington adds the following even more drastic one: 'Procrustes, you will remember,' he says, 'stretched or chopped down his guests to fit the bed he constructed. But perhaps you have not heard the rest of the story. He measured them up before they left the next morning, and wrote a learned paper On the Uniformity of Stature of Travellers for the Anthropological Society of Attica.'

Besides yielding a definite answer to the question of how far the seemingly discovered facts of science are manufactured facts, our newly won insight into the nature of the electric and magnetic polarties throws light also on the possibility of so handling both that their application will lead no longer to a cancellation, but to a true continuation, of nature's own creative deeds.

An example of this will appear in the next part of our studies, devoted to observations in the field of optics.

1 Note that the series starts on the left with graphite, i.e. with carbon. This substance appears here as a metal among metals, and indeed as the most 'n.o.ble' of all. Electricity in this way reveals a secret of carbon well known to the mediaeval alchemist and still known in our day to people in the Orient.

2 There is even a gas which a.s.sumes magnetic properties when exposed to extreme cold-oxygen in the solid state.

3 By watering plants with water that had been exposed to heat from different sources, E. Pfeiffer has shown in the chemical laboratory of the Goetheanum that heat engendered by means of electricity is 'dead'

heat. It follows that it is not the same for human health whether the heat used for cooking or heating purposes is obtained by burning wood or coal, or by means of electricity.

CHAPTER XIV

Colours as 'Deeds and Sufferings of Light'

'As for what I have done as a poet, I take no pride in it whatever.

Excellent poets have lived at the same time as myself; poets more excellent have lived before me, and others will come after me. But that in my century I am the only person who knows the truth in the difficult science of colours - of that, I say, I am not a little proud, and here I have a consciousness of a superiority to many.'

In these words spoken to his secretary, Eckermann, in 1829, a few years before his death, Goethe gave his opinion on the significance of his scientific researches in the field of optical phenomena. He knew that the path he had opened up had led him to truths which belong to the original truths of mankind. He expressed this by remarking that his theory of colour was 'as old as the world'.