Article April 2, 1921 Issue

"We tread on forces"

EDWARD NASH

The riddle of the universe! Philosophers have tried to solve it all through the ages. We observe the sun and the stars, the seasons and atmospheric changes, and we assume that the universe consists of material bodies of spherical form to which other bodies of similar form are attracted and around which the latter circle in definite paths or orbits with unceasing, unspent motion. But whence the initial propulsion arises, when it began, how it is maintained, when it will end, and what it is for, no one can explain. The accepted theory is only a supposition which furnishes a plausible temporary explanation of such observable phenomena as verying seasons, night and day, cold and heat, and so on. The theory is an excuse, not a solution of the problem, because it has an unexplainable basis, a basis of fancy, not of fact. It is a theory of relativity, not touching the absolute. The ordinary thinking individual is therefore in the very unsatisfactory position of one who sees no hope of ever arriving at any reasonable explanation of what life and the universe really mean. Like a child who is put off with, "Don't ask so many questions; you will know some day," he has to be content with what the physical scientist gives him from time to time.

If we examine any one of the so-called material laws in the light of modern thought we shall find that there is not one that can hold water. The law of gravitation is one most generally accepted. It decrees that one material body attracts another. That is quite easily believed so long as matter is accepted as substance. We accept the implications of the supposed law of gravitation because every one else accepts them, but we feel instinctively that it is no law. By this false belief man is tied and fettered, and from it he wants to be and can be freed. He wants to find a real law to ring out the false and ring in the true.

To-day the great modern mathematician classes the law of gravitation as a law of curvature. He finds that a moving material body, unopposed by any external resistance, would travel in a straight line. Attracted by gravity it is drawn out of its straight path and begins to form a curve. Now, a curve, however slight, must eventually come back upon itself and inclose a space. Gravity, then, becomes a supposed force of attraction, a secondary force, which interferes with and opposes another initial force of propulsion and tries to limit and circumscribe its action. This is all very interesting and reasonable. But here the mathematician stops. He does not say whence the initial force to which gravitation opposes itself is derived, and we are left in the quandary of not knowing which of these two opposed forces is the stronger. It is presumably a balance of relative forces, a theory of relativity, with no absolute truth in it; a theory which breaks down because it tries to put life, truth, intelligence, and substance into matter.

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"We tread on forces"

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