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
thankful that our eyes have the imperfection of not appreciating
parallel rays. But we will now consider how this imperfection may be
remedied by science.
There are two different ways of doing this--viz., first, by increasing
the amount of light received, by means of telescopes of great
aperture; and secondly, by employing an artificial retina a thousand
times more sensitive than the human. Now, the human retina receives
the impression of what it looks at in a very minute fraction of a
second, provided of course that the eye is properly focussed, and no
further impression will be made by keeping the eye fixed on that
object; but in celestial photography, when the telescope is turned
into a camera, the sensitive plate, having received the impression in
the first second, may be exposed not only for many seconds, or
minutes, or hours, but for an aggregate of even days by re-exposure,
every second of which time details on that plate new objects, sunk so
deep in the vast depths of space as to be immeasurably beyond the
power of the human eye, even through telescopes hundreds of times more
powerful than the largest instruments that science has enabled us to
construct; and yet here is laid before us a faithful chart, by means
of which we may once more continue our journey through space. A short
exposure will show us firmaments and nebulae just outside the range of
our greatest telescopes, and every additional second extends our
vision by such vast increases of distances that the brain reels at the
thought; and yet, as we have seen, exposures of these sensitive plates
may be, and have been, made not only for seconds, but for thousands
and even hundreds of thousands of seconds! And still there is no end,
no end where the weary mind can rest and contemplate; the finite mind
of man can only cry out that there is no limit. In spite of all its
strivings and groping by aid of speculative philosophy, the finite
cannot attain to the Infinite, nor get any nearer to where the mighty
sea of time breaks in noiseless waves on the dim shore of eternity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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