The Day the Universe Changed - James Burke [135]
The definition of matter was equally straightforward. It was something impenetrable occupying space in time. It filled space because the space it occupied could not become ‘fuller’. When materials were mixed, one was filling spaces in the other. The elements of all matter were constant in mass, volume and shape, so the constancy of the physical structure of the universe was assured, and conserved in all its parts, whatever change might happen to the material within it.
All change was caused by motion. Change was defined as being in time and in space, capable of happening only to matter. Change consisted of a change of spatial co-ordinates in time which represented the path of an object in motion. However, even if motion implied matter, matter did not always imply motion, because there had to be a motionless object somewhere in the universe whose existence was inferred from the existence of moving objects. Motion, like matter, could not be destroyed, only changed. Since motion represented energy in motion, all energy was thus conserved.
Matter, made of rigid and compact units, moved through absolute space according to strict laws of motion. Everything that happened was due to matter impacting other matter. Even gravity was the manifestation of a series of impacts of invisible matter in space.
Newton’s universe was certain, operating in absolute conditions. All events taking place in it at the same time occurred simultaneously, which is to say that everything, at any one moment, existed simultaneously. All simultaneous events on earth were also simultaneous with those on the most distant stars. Newton’s universe implied an attitude to knowledge that was at once practical, optimistic and confident. The purpose of science was to investigate reality and to make definitive statements about it. Knowledge advanced certainty. The spread of knowledge was, therefore, desirable.
The eighteenth-century Enlightenment drew its inspiration from this Newtonian view of knowledge and its purpose. If the universe was a structure functioning according to reasonable principles then it was comprehensible to reason. Since all men had the potential to develop and use their powers of reason, the universe was ultimately capable of explanation. Education to this 276 end was, therefore, the principal endeavour of society.
In the brief period since Galileo had shown that the universe obeyed the laws of mathematical physics which could reveal an objective reality understandable with the aid of science, all investigation was conducted according to the belief in the absolutes of Newton’s universe. The aim of science was to measure and observe nature as it showed itself in those absolutes.
It was just such an inquiry that shattered the calm of Newtonian physics and its enlightened view of what science could do. The inquiry was related, fittingly enough, to a natural force that Newton himself had virtually ignored. The force in question was electricity.
For centuries it had been noted that when amber was rubbed it became attractive and that compass needles pointed north. Both phenomena had been subjected to very limited investigation until 1665, when Otto von Guericke, the mayor of Magdeburg, produced a sulphur ball which gave off sparks when it was rubbed. In 1675 the French astronomer Jean Picard noticed that his mercury barometer glowed when the mercury inside the glass was shaken. Others began rubbing glass. Francis Hauksbee built a globe that spun on a crank and produced ‘statical electricity’. In 1729 Stephen Grey found that a silk thread attached to the cork in one end of a glass tube would conduct an attractive force some hundreds of feet when the glass was rubbed. According to him this ‘flow’of attraction suggested that the force behaved like a liquid.
Electricity appeared to be a fluid which had no measurable