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Jeans, Sir James - The Mysterious Universe - Conservation of matter, spirit and energy
Identifier
004061
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
Not apparently spiritual but about the fact we haven't yet fully understood the functions of equivalence.
e = mc2
energy = form and function/spirit
A description of the experience
In a classical series of experiments made in 1840 to 1850, Joule measured the energy of heat and tried to measure the energy of sound with the rudimentary apparatus of a violincello string. Imperfect though his experiments were, they resulted in the recognition of ‘conservation of energy’ as a principle, which covered all known transformations of energy through its various modes of mechanical energy, heat sound and electrical energy. They showed in brief that energy is transformed rather than lost, an apparent loss of energy of motion being compensated by the appearance of an exactly equal energy of heat and sound; the energy of motion of the rushing train is replaced by the equivalent energy of the noise of the shrieking brakes and of the heating of wheels, brake blocks and rails.
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If we accept the astronomical evidence of the ages of the stars and the physical evidence of the highly penetrating radiation, as jointly establishing that matter can really be annihilated, or rather transformed into radiation, then this transformation becomes one of the fundamental processes of the universe. The conservation of matter disappears entirely from science, while the conservation of mass and of energy become identical.
Thus the three major conservation laws, those of the conservation of matter, mass and energy, reduce to one. One simple fundamental entity which may take many forms, matter and radiation in particular is conserved through all changes; the sum total of this entity forms the whole activity of the universe, which does not change its total quantity, but it continually changes its quality, and this change of quality appears to be the main operation going on in the universe which forms our material home.
The whole of the available evidence seems to me to indicate that the change is, with possible insignificant exceptions, for ever in the same direction – for ever solid matter melts into insubstantial radiation: for ever the tangible changes into the intangible.……
The two may be inter changeable, one passing into the other as the chrysalis passes into the butterfly – to which, some scientists might think it necessary to add ‘and as we imagine the butterfly to pass back into the chrysalis’