Flowers of the SkyProctor, Richard A. (Richard Anthony)
Science
Flowers of the Sky
Proctor, Richard A. (Richard Anthony)
Astronomy
In the first place the study of gravity brings us at once to the
consideration of the infinitely minute,--at least of what is for us
practically infinite in its minuteness. If we consider the above
quotation attentively, we perceive that this quality of gravity was
recognised by Newton. "It is not the quantity of the surfaces of
_particles_," he says, "but the quantity of solid matter which they
contain," that gives to gravity its power. Gravity resides in the
ultimate particles of matter. We cannot conceive of matter so divided,
no matter how finely, that non-gravitating particles could be separated
from gravitating particles. Without entering into the question what
atoms are, we perceive that these ultimate constituents of matter must
contain, each according to the quantity of matter in it, the gravitating
energy. Only, observe how incongruously we are compelled to speak. (It
is always so when we deal with the infinite, whether the infinitely
great or the infinitely minute.) We are speaking of atoms as the
ultimate constituents of matter, and yet we are compelled, in describing
their gravitating energy, to speak of the quantity of matter contained
in each atom,--in other words, we speak in the same breath of an atom as
not admitting of being divided or diminished, and of its containing
matter by quantity, that is, by more or less. May we not, however,
reasonably accept both views? The reasoning is sound by which science
has proved that, so far as our material universe is concerned, there is
a limit beyond which the division of matter cannot be supposed to
go,--insomuch that Sir W. Thomson has indicated the actual limits of
size of the atoms composing matter. Yet, passing in imagination beyond
the bounds of our visible universe, and so entering into the next order
of universe below it (in scale of construction),--the ether of
space,--the atoms of our universe may be infinitely divisible in that
universe, may be, in fact, compared with _its_ particles, as the suns
and worlds of our universe are to our atoms and molecules.
But while gravity thus draws us to the contemplation of the infinitely
minute, it also leads us to the consideration of what is for us the
infinitely vast.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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