Science and the Infinite; or, Through a Window in the Blank WallKlein, Sydney T. (Sydney Turner)
Religion
Science and the Infinite; or, Through a Window in the Blank Wall
Klein, Sydney T. (Sydney Turner)
Religion and science
How few people have ever realised what a wonderful Counting Machine
they possess in their organ of Sight! I think the best method I can
adopt, to bring this clearly before you, is to take our tuning-fork,
vibrating 500 times per second, a rapidity which to some will be even
difficult to comprehend, and then ask you to consider how long that
fork must continue to vibrate before it has accomplished the full
number of frequencies, which must necessarily impinge upon the eye in
one second of time, before the phenomenon of sight becomes possible.
That tuning-fork would have not only to continue its vibrations
without diminution for seconds, minutes, hours, weeks, months, years,
or hundreds of years, but for 30,000 years before it has accomplished
the full number of pulsations which, as Ether waves, must strike the
eye in one second of time, to give the impression of Light; the
calculation is easy, the rills of Red Light are so small that 40,000
of these only cover one inch of length, and light travels 186,000
miles per second. If therefore the number of inches in 186,000 miles
are multiplied by the 40,000, and the product is divided by the 500
times which the tuning-fork vibrates in one second, you have the
number of seconds that tuning-fork must vibrate, before it has
completed the number of impacts which, in one second of time, must
fall on our retina to give us the impression of red light; and that
tuning-fork would have to vibrate nearly twice as long, say 50,000
years, to reach the number of impulses which strike the eye in one
second of time and give the impression of violet light; and between
these two limits are situated the colours--Orange, Yellow, Green,
Blue, and Indigo.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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