The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays Part 28

The transported or erratic stones, often of great size, which are found in many parts of Ireland, are records of these long past events: events which happened before Man, as a rational being, appeared upon the Earth.

287

A SPECULATION AS TO A PREMATERIAL UNIVERSE [1]

"And therefore...these things likewise had a birth; for things which are of mortal body could not for an infinite time back...

have been able to set at naught the puissant strength of immeasurable age."--LUCRETIUS, _De Rerum Natura._

"O fearful meditation! Where, alack! Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid?" --SHAKESPEARE.

IN the material universe we find presented to our senses a physical development continually progressing, extending to all, even the most minute, material configurations. Some fundamental distinctions existing between this development as apparent in the organic and the inorganic systems of the present day are referred to elsewhere in this volume.[2] In the present essay, these systems as having a common origin and common ending, are merged in the same consideration as to the nature of the origin of material systems in general. This present essay is occupied by the consideration of the necessity of limiting material interactions in past time. The speculation originated in the difficulties which present themselves when we ascribe to these interactions infinite duration in the past. These difficulties first claim our consideration.

[1] Proc. Royal Dublin Soc., vol. vii., Part V, 1892.

[2] _The Abundance of Life._

288

Accepting the hypothesis of Kant and Laplace in its widest extension, we are referred to a primitive condition of wide material diffusion, and necessarily too of material instability.

The hypothesis is, in fact, based upon this material instability.

We may pursue the sequence of events a.s.sumed in this hypothesis into the future, and into the past.

In the future we find finality to progress clearly indicated. The hypothesis points to a time when there will be no more progressive change but a mere sequence of unfruitful events, such as the eternal uniform motion of a ma.s.s of matter no longer gaining or losing heat in an ether possessed of a uniform distribution of energy in all its parts. Or, again, if the ether absorb the energy of material motion, this vast and dark aggregation eternally poised and at rest within it. The action is transferred to the subtle parts of the ether which suffer none of the energy to degrade. This is, physically, a thinkable future.

Our minds suggest no change, and demand none. More than this, change is unthinkable according to our present ideas of energy.

Of progress there is an end.

This finality _a parte post_ is instructive. Abstract considerations, based on geometrical or a.n.a.lytical ill.u.s.trations, question the finiteness of some physical developments. Thus our sun may require eternal time to attain the temperature of the ether around it, the approach to this condition being a.s.sumed to be asymptotic in

289

character. But consider the legitimate _reductio ad absurdum_ of an ember raked from a fire 1000 years ago. Is it not yet cooled down to the constant temperature of its surroundings? And we may evidently increase the time a million-fold if we please. It appears as if we must regard eternity as outliving every progressive change, For there is no convergence or enfeeblement of time. The ever-flowing present moves no differently for the occurrence of the mightiest or the most insignificant events. And even if we say that time is only the attendant upon events, yet this attendant waits patiently for the end, however long deferred.

Does the essentially material hypothesis of Kant and Laplace account for an infinite past as thinkably as it accounts for the infinite future? As this hypothesis is based upon material instability the question resolves itself into this:-- Is the a.s.sumption of an infinitely prolonged past instability a probable or possible account of the past? There are, it appears to me, great difficulties involved in accepting the hypothesis of infinitely prolonged material instability. I will refer here to three princ.i.p.al objections. The first may be called a metaphysical objection; the second is partly metaphysical and partly physical, the third may be considered a physical objection, as it is involved directly in the phenomena presented by our universe.

The metaphysical objection must have presented itself to every one who has considered the question. It may

290

be put thus:--If present events are merely one stage in an infinite progress, why is not the present stage long ago pa.s.sed over? We are evidently at liberty to push back any stage of progress to as remote a period as we like by putting back first the one before this and next the stage preceding this, and so on, for, by hypothesis, there is no beginning to the progress.

Thus, the sum of pa.s.sing events const.i.tuting the present universe should long ago have been accomplished and pa.s.sed away. If we consider alternative hypotheses not involving this difficulty, we are at once struck by the fact that the future of material development is free of the objection. For the eternity of unprogressive events involved in the future on Kant's hypothesis, is not only thinkable, but any change is, as observed, irreconcilable with our ideas of energy. As in the future so in the past we look to a cessation to progress. But as we believe the activity of the present universe must in some form have existed all along, the only refuge in the past is to imagine an active but unprogressive eternity, the unprogressive activity at some period becoming a progressive activity--that progressive activity of which we are spectators. To the unprogressive activity there was no beginning; in fact, beginning is as unthinkable and uncalled for to the unprogressive activity of the past as ending is to the unprogressive activity of the future, when all developmental actions shall have ceased. There is no beginning or ending to the activity of the universe.

291

There is beginning and ending to present progressive activity.

Looking through the realm of nature we seek beginning and ending, but "pa.s.sing through nature to eternity" we find neither. Both are justified; the questioning of the ancient poet regarding the past, and of the modern regarding the future, quoted at the head of this essay.

The next objection, which is in part metaphysical, is founded on the difficulty of ascribing any ultimate reality or potency to forces diminishing through eternal time. Thus, against the a.s.sumption that our universe is the result of material aggregation progressing over eternal time, which involves the primitive infinite separation of the particles, we may ask, what force can have acted between particles sundered by infinite distance? The gravitational force falling off as the square of the distance, must vanish at infinity if we mean what we say when we ascribe infinite separation to them. Their condition is then one of neutral stability, a finite movement of the particles neither increasing nor diminishing interaction. They had then remained eternally in their separated condition, there being no cause to render such condition finite. The difficulty involved here appears to me of the same nature as the difficulty of ascribing any residual heat to the sun after eternal time has elapsed. In both cases we are bound to prolong the time, from our very idea of time, till progress is no more, when in the one case we can imagine no mutual approximation of the

292

particles, in the other no further cooling of the body. However, I will riot dwell further upon this objection, as it does not, I believe, present itself with equal force to every mind. A reason less open to dispute, as being less subjective, against the aggregation of infinitely remote particles as the origin of our universe, is contained in the physical objection.

In this objection we consider that the appearance presented by our universe negatives the hypothesis of infinitely prolonged aggregation. We base this negation upon the appearance of simultaneity ~ presented by the heavens, contending that this simultaneity is contrary to what we would expect to find in the case of particles gathered from infinitely remote distances.

Whether these particles were endowed with relative motions or not is unimportant to the consideration. In what respects do the phenomena of our universe present the appearance of simultaneous phenomena? We must remember that the suns in s.p.a.ce are as fires which brighten only for a moment and are then extinguished. It is in this sense we must regard the longest burning of the stars.

Whether just lit or just expiring counts little in eternity. The light and heat of the star is being absorbed by the ether of s.p.a.ce as effectually and rapidly as the ocean swallows the ripple from the wings of an expiring insect. Sir William Herschel says of the galaxy of the milky way:-- "We do not know the rate of progress of this mysterious chronometer, but it is nevertheless certain that it cannot

293

last for ever, and its past duration cannot be infinite." We do not know, indeed, the rate of progress of the chronometer, but if the dial be one divided into eternal durations the consummation of any finite physical change represents such a movement of the hand as is accomplished in a single vibration of the balance wheel.

Hence we must regard the hosts of glittering stars as a conflagration that has been simultaneously lighted up in the heavens. The enormous (to our ideas) thermal energy of the stars resembles the scintillation of iron dust in a jar of oxygen when a pinch of the dust is thrown in. Although some particles be burnt up before others become alight, and some linger yet a little longer than the others, in our day's work the scintillation of the iron dust is the work of a single instant, and so in the long night of eternity the scintillation of the mightiest suns of s.p.a.ce is over in a moment. A little longer, indeed, in duration than the life which stirs a moment in response to the diffusion of the energy, but only very little. So must an Eternal Being regard the scintillation of the stars and the periodic vibration of life in our geological time and the most enduring efforts of thought. The latter indeed are no more lasting than

"... the labour of ants In the light of a million million of suns."

But the myriad suns themselves, with their generations, are the momentary gleam of lights for ever after extinguished.

294

Again, science suggests that the present process of material aggregation is not finished, and possibly will only be when it prevails universally. Hence the very distribution of the stars, as we observe them, as isolated aggregations, indicates a development which in the infinite duration must be regarded as equally advanced in all parts of stellar s.p.a.ce and essentially a simultaneous phenomenon. For were we spectators of a system in which any very great difference of age prevailed, this very great difference would be attended by some such appearance as the following:--

The aupearance of but one star, other generations being long extinct or no others yet come into being; or, perhaps, a faint nebulous wreath of aggregating matter somewhere solitary in the heavens; or no sign of matter beyond our system, either because ungathered or long pa.s.sed away into darkness.[1]

Some such appearances were to be expected had the aggregation of matter depended solely on chance encounters of particles scattered through infinite s.p.a.ce.

For as, by hypothesis, the aggregation occupies an infinite time in consummation it is nearly a certainty that each particle encountered after immeasurable time, and then for the first time endowed with actual gravitational potential energy, would have long expended this energy

[1] It is interesting to reflect upon the effect which an entire absence of luminaries outside our solar system would have had upon the views of our philosophers and upon our outlook on life.

295

before another particle was gathered. But the fact that so many fires which we know to be of brief duration are scattered through a region of s.p.a.ce, and the fact of a configuration which we believe to be a transitory ore, suggest their simultaneous aggregation here and there. And in the nebulous wreaths situated amidst the stars there is evidence that these actually originated where they now are, for in such no relative motion, I believe, has as yet been detected by the spectroscope. All this, too, is in keeping with the nebular hypothesis of Kant and Laplace so long as this does not a.s.sume a primitive infinite dispersion of matter, but the gathering of matter from finite distances first into nebulous patches which aggregating with each other have given rise to our system of stars. But if we extend this hypothesis throughout an infinite past by the supposition of aggregation of infinitely remote particles we replace the simultaneous approach required in order to accotnt for the simultaneous phenomena visible in the heavens, by a succession of aggregative events, by hypothesis at intervals of nearly infinite duration, when the events of the universe had consisted of fitful gleams lighted after eternities of time and extinguished for yet other eternities.

Finally, if we seek to replace the eternal instability involved in Kant's hypothesis when extended over an infinite past, by any hypothesis of material stability, we at once find ourselves in the difficulty that from the known properties of matter such stability must have been

296

permanent if ever existent, which is contrary to fact. Thus the kinetic inertia expressed in Newton's first law of motion might well be supposed to secure equilibrium with material attraction, but if primevally diffused matter had ever thus been held in equilibrium it must have remained so, or it was maintained so imperfectly, which brings us back to endless evolution.

On these grounds I contend that the present gravitational properties of matter cannot be supposed to have acted for all past duration. Universal equilibrium of gravitating particles would have been indestructible by internal causes. Perpetual instability or evolution is alike unthinkable and contrary to the phenomena of the universe of which we are cognisant. We therefore turn from gravitating matter as affording no rational account of the past. We do so of necessity, however much we feel our ignorance of the nature of the unknown actions to which we have recourse.

A prematerial condition of the universe was, we a.s.sume, a condition in which uniformity as regards the average distribution of energy in s.p.a.ce prevailed, but neterogeneity and instability were possible. The realization of that possibility was the beginning we seek, and we today are witnesses of the train of events involved in the breakdown of an eternal past equilibrium.

We are witnesses on this hypothesis, of a catastrophe possibly confined to certain regions of s.p.a.ce, but which is, to the motions and configurations concerned, absolutely unique, reversible to

297

its former condition of potential by no process of which we can have any conception.

Our speculation is that we, as spectators of evolution, are witnessing the interaction of forces which have not always been acting. A prematerial state of the universe was one of unfruitful motions, that is, motions unattended by progressing changes, in our region of the ether. How extended we cannot say; the nature of the motions we know not; but the kinetic ent.i.ties differed from matter in the one important particular of not possessing gravitational attraction. Such kinetic configurations we cannot consider to be matter. It was _possible_ to construct matter by their summation or linkage as the configuration of the crystal is possible in the clear supersaturated liquid.