Part One
Science and Materialism
So, to recap, we had arrived at the late 19th century when science had reached a
peak of complacency never quite matched - though hardly relinquished - since.
Materialism (the philosophical variety, not the
gathering-of-material-possessions kind often referred to as materialism these
days) had, it seemed, won the day. The atheist, left-wing dogma of Karl Marx was
gaining a devoted following in Western universities and the academic system
became weighted heavily on the left. That, I believe, remains true to this day
although perhaps less so in a political sense but even more so in a
philosophical sense.
Science had an answer for (almost) everything and everything could be shown to
have a physical first-cause: no need for any supernatural explanations. God
became redundant. Anyone - especially other scientists or academics - who
persisted with faith-based beliefs were at best patronised or at worst
ostracised and vilified. But let us not underestimate the power of the
materialist argument. How could one argue with discoveries in physics such as
the atom? In biology the microscope could show cells dividing and organisms
growing; astronomers had shown our world to be merely one small planet in a
solar system far from unique in a vast - perhaps infinite - cosmos.
Archaeological discoveries had shown the Earth to have been around for millions
- perhaps billions - of years: so very much longer than the few thousand years
claimed by bible scholars. And, perhaps most convincing of all, Charles Darwin
had produced a theory on the
origin of species
which - by the process of natural selection - finally disposed of any
requirement for a divine creator. The evidence was in front of our eyes:
presented with such authority and certainty by a new orthodoxy rapidly taking on
the aura of a priesthood, complete with dogma.
However, arising out of this golden age of science were a few highly significant
and visionary thinkers, unconstrained by any current dogma. I mentioned earlier
that the late-19th century scientists believed that all but a few "anomalies"
had been, or soon would be explained. These anomalies included the true nature
of electricity, magnetism and light. Enter a brilliant Scottish physicist called
James Clerk Maxwell.
Maxwell studied the wave properties of electricity and magnetism and, in a
series of famous equations, he showed that they could be regarded as aspects of
the same thing: henceforth called electro-magnetism. He noticed that
electromagnetic waves had a velocity equal to that of light (300,000 Km/sec or
186,000 miles/sec). Thus, he reasoned, light and electromagnetic waves must
belong to a single spectrum, differing only in wavelength and frequency. In
other words, light is electro-magnetism and vice-versa.
Maxwell's work was to lead into another, even more visionary and brilliant
theory: Einstein's relativity (or, to be more precise: Special Relativity).
Now this is where science becomes very interesting, not to mention very weird.
Newtonian physics held that time and space were absolutes: they would remain
invariable no matter where, when or how they were observed. However if, as
Maxwell had shown, the speed of light is a fundamental constant of nature, some
assumptions had to be abandoned. For example: it would be safe to assume that if
I sat at the front of a train travelling at 100 mph and threw a ball at 50 mph
towards the track ahead of me, the actual speed of the ball would be 150 mph. By
the same logic, if I were to shine a light from the front of the same train, the
total speed of the light should be 186,000 miles per second plus the speed of
the train (100mph). Logical, but entirely wrong. The speed of light would not
change. In an attempt to explain this, Maxwell proposed that the speed of light
was constant relative to the medium in which it travelled. He called this medium
the aether (ether). Quick example: sound waves travel in air (the medium) and
the air inside a moving train is travelling along with the train, at the same
speed. Thus your voice will sound the same on a moving train as it would on the
platform.
In the late 1800's, Michelson and Morley set up experiments expecting to prove
the existence of this ether. The results were negative.
So what? So Albert Einstein, a patent clerk working part-time on his PhD,
produced one of the most important - not to say astounding - scientific theories
of all time. If the speed of light is constant, something else has to give; in
fact, everything else has to give. Measurements of distance and duration were no
longer reliable and depended entirely upon the frame of reference of the
observer. The common sense, mechanical, Newtonian view of the world was thrown
out and replaced by an alternative reality in which two people (one moving and
the other stationary), watching the same event, could legitimately disagree upon
the precise time at which the event occurred. This does not involve illusion nor
does it mean that one was right and the other wrong: both are correct! I can't
do justice to an explanation here, so please do follow the links on Special
Relativity and simultaneity for more information. Special Relativity is so
called because it is a "special case" of a more complete General Theory of
Relativity published later. General Relativity takes into account the effects of
gravity and acceleration which are not addressed in Special Relativity. Here is
a short list of some of the strange predictions arising out of both Special and
General Relativity:
- Time dilation: time slows as speed approaches that of light.
- Length contraction: distance shortens as speed approaches that of light.
- Light speed is the absolute limit: nothing can travel faster.
- Mass increases towards infinity as light speed is approached.
- Space itself is "warped", or curved, by massive objects (stars,
galaxies, etc.).
- Extremely massive objects can warp space into a point, or "singularity",
referred to as a "Black Hole".
Many of these concepts are almost (perhaps certainly) impossible to visualise.
Just because a scientist says he understands relativity, it does not follow that
he can imagine something such as curved space. On that very subject, I'm
reminded of a passage in the excellent book
"The Matter Myth"
by
Paul Davies
(physicist) and
John Gribbin (science writer):
"
Eddington's implicit boast of being the only person other
than Einstein able to understand the general theory of relativity did not mean,
I believe, that he and Einstein alone could visualize the revolutionary new
concepts such as curved spacetime."
