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Jeans, Sir James - The Mysterious Universe - Matter and energy
Identifier
002968
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Sir James Jeans – The Mysterious Universe
It has … been suggested by Mosharrafa and others that this may express the whole difference between matter and energy, matter being nothing more than a sort of congealed energy………….
The properties it needed to fulfil this function had been defined with ever increasing precision by Huygens, Thomas Young, Faraday and Maxwell. It was thought of as a jelly like sea through which waves could travel, just as vibrations or undulations travel through a jelly...................
The concept of an ether entered science some two centuries ago or more. When the known properties of gross matter failed to explain a phenomenon, scientists met the difficulty by [using] ether. ……………..
There was of course a special temptation to resort to this in problems which appeared to call for action at a distance. It is on the face of it, such good sound sense to assert that matter can only act where it is, and cannot possibly act where it is not, that he who argues to the contrary can hardly hope to carry the majority of his fellows with him. Descartes had gone so far as to argue that the bare existence of bodies separated by distance was a sufficient proof of a medium between them.