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
As we have, in the former six Views, been gradually mounting above the
mists and illusions of our everyday thoughts, and can look through our
Window with, I hope, a clearer vision, I shall venture in this present
View to carry the subject of the _Future_ still further, and show
that, just as we have now before us and can read the papyri which were
written 5000 years ago, so it is possible to conceive that books,
written and being written and printed 5000 years hence, are _at
present_ in existence, and that it is even possible the human race has
actually already read them; whether we shall be able to see them and
read them in our own lifetime may be open to question; that may again
depend upon the development of special cross-circuiting of brain
filaments. Meanwhile, in order to carry our present View to the utmost
limit of our conception, in a manner somewhat similar to what we did
for Space, I will again ask you to join me in a thought-flight
towards the appreciation of this second great Mystery.
With this object in view we will first consider the human senses of
sight and hearing, commencing with sound, or the vibrations which
affect the tympanum of the human ear. Sound travels in air at about
1130 feet per second, and if the vibrating body, giving out the sound,
oscillates sixteen times in one second, it follows that, spreading
over this 1130 feet, there will be sixteen waves, giving a length of
about 70 feet to each wave. This is the lowest sound that the human
ear can appreciate as a musical note, and is, what may be called, the
fourth Octave above one vibration in one second. When the number of
vibrations in a second sinks below sixteen, the ear no longer
appreciates them as a musical sound, but is able to hear them as
separate vibrations or beats. The easiest way of illustrating this is
by means of a revolving disc, with sixteen holes pierced at regular
intervals round the edge, and a jet of high-pressure air, which is
forced through each of the holes successively as they revolve. When
the disc does not quite complete one revolution in a second, only
fifteen puffs come to the ear in a second of time, and they are heard
as puffs; but when the rate reaches one revolution in a second, the
sound, as if by magic, changes into the lowest musical sound. The same
result may be obtained in a more pronounced form by means of
explosions or pistol shots; when these are slow and heard separately,
they are painful and almost unbearable to the ear, but, as soon as
their rapidity, namely, at sixteen per second, gets beyond the power
of the ear to differentiate between the explosions, the impression, as
if by magic, changes into a continuous or musical sound, like a
thirty-foot pipe note of an organ.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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