John Bernhard Stallo

“ It is thus evident that the constancy, upon the observation of which the assertion of the indestructibility of matter is based, is simply the constancy of a relation, and that the ordinary statement of the fact is crude and inadequate. Indeed, while it is true that the weight of a body is a measure of its mass, this is but a single case of the more general fact that the masses of bodies are inversely as the velocities imparted to them by the action of the same force, or, more generally still, inversely as the accelerations produced in them by the same force. ”

“ There is probably no one, at this day, who invests the atoms with hooks and loops, or (Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, ii., 398, et seq.) accounts for the bitter taste of wormwood by the raggedness, and for the sweetness of honey by the smooth roundness of the constituent atoms. But the "atom" of modern science is still of determinate weight, if not of determinate figure, and stands for something more than an abstract unit, even in the view of those who, like Boscovich, Faraday, Ampère, or Fechner, profess to regard it as a mere centre of force. ”

“ But the very principle of relativity forbids such an hypothesis. The annihilation of all bodies but one would not only destroy the motion of this one remaining body and bring it to rest, as Prof. Neumann sees, but it would also destroy its very existence and bring it to naught, as he does not see. A body cannot survive the system of relations in which alone it has its being; its presence or position in space is no more possible without reference to other bodies than its change of position or presence is possible without such reference ”

“ All quality is relation; all action is reaction; all force is antagonism; all measure is a ratio between terms neither of which is absolute; every objectively real thing is a term in numberless series of mutual implications, and its reality outside of these series is utterly inconceivable. ”

“ There is hardly any concept which has not, in science as well as in metaphysics, given rise to the same confusion which prevails in regard to "force" and "cause;" and the blow leveled at these would demolish all concepts whatever. Nevertheless, it is of the greatest moment, in all speculations concerning the interdependence of physical phenomena, never to lose sight of the fact that the reality of force is purely conceptual, and that it is not a distinct and individual tangible or intangible entity. ”

“ I must not be understood as asserting or intimating that our knowledge can ever be other than asymptotic to the endless and boundless fact of the universe. But there is a dogmatism of ignorance which is no less audacious than the dogmatism of sciolistic knowledge. ”

“ Thus we speak of the 'solubility' of a substance, meaning its behavior toward water; we speak of its 'weight,' meaning its attraction to the earth; and we may justly call a substance 'blue,' under the tacit assumption that we are only speaking of its action upon a normal eye. But, if what we call a property always implies a relation between two things, then a property or quality can never depend upon the nature of one agent alone, but exists only in relation to and dependence on the nature of some second object acted upon. ”

“ Atoms are absolute physical constants, or constants of mass; and I have shown that there are, and can be, no absolute constants of mass. And it is evident now, I trust, that there are similarly no constant central forces belonging to, or inherent in, constants of mass as such. Both the constants of mass and the constant forces assumed to belong to them are simply parts of the scaffolding of the intellect, when it seeks to subject the phenomena of the material world to exact mathematical determination. ”

“ How illusive are our ideas of motion is thus made sufficiently manifest. That which seems moving proves to be stationary; that which seems stationary proves to be moving; while that which we conclude to be going rapidly in one direction turns out to be going much more rapidly in the opposite direction. And so we are taught that what we are conscious of is not the real motion of any object, either in its rate or direction, but merely its motion as measured from an assigned position—either the position we ourselves occupy or some other. ”

“ Force and matter, though presupposing each other in action, are fundamentally disparate; they are essentially distinct, and mutually irreducible entities. Matter, as such, is passive, dead; all motion or life is caused by force; and the only possible solution of the problems of physiology, no less than of physics and chemistry, consists in the enumeration of the forces acting upon the material particles, and in the exact quantitative determination of the effects produced by their action. ”

“ Physicists generally, however, are in still greater confusion as to the nature of force in another respect. Bodies are said to be endowed with a definite quantity of force, if not with a given number of forces; it is assumed that to every particular body or particle belongs, or in such body or particle in and by itself is inherent, an invariable measure of energy. This statement, besides involving the confusion just noted as to the reality of force, implies the assumption that force can be an attribute or concomitant of a single body or particle as such. ”

“ An object is hard as compared with another which is soft, but which, in turn, may be contrasted with a third still softer; and, again, there is no standard object which is either absolutely hard or absolutely soft. A body is simple as compared with the compound into which it enters as a constituent; but there is, and can be no physically real thing which is absolutely simple. Similarly, all changes of position or distance between two bodies are wholly relative, and it is a matter of purely arbitrary determination, which of them is taken as being at rest, and which as in motion. ”

“ Motion, as taking place apart from those limitations of space which we habitually associate with it, is totally unthinkable. For motion is change of place; but, in unlimited space, change of place is inconceivable, because place itself is inconceivable. Place can be conceived only by reference to other places; and, in the absence of objects dispersed through space, a place could be conceived only in relation to the limits of space; whence it follows that in unlimited space place cannot be conceived—all places must be equidistant from boundaries that do not exist. ”

“ Many chemists of the present day refuse to speak of atoms and molecules as real things. Their caution leads them to stop short of the clear, sharp, mechanically-intelligible atomic theory enunciated by Dalton, or any form of that theory, and to make the doctrine of multiple proportions their intellectual bourn. I respect the caution, though I think it is here misplaced. The chemists who recoil from these notions of atoms and molecules, accept without hesitation the undulatory theory of light. Like you and me, they one and all believe in an ether and its light-producing waves. ”

“ The gas is not only comparatively indeterminate—without fixity of volume, without crystalline or other structure, etc.—but it also exhibits, in its functional manifestations, that simplicity and regularity which is characteristic of all types or primary forms. Looking, first, to the purely physical aspect of a gas—I speak, of course, only of gases which are approximately perfect, to the exclusion of vapors at low temperatures and of gases which are readily coercible: its volume expands and contracts inversely as the pressure to which it is subjected ”

“ In general, it may be said that the assumption of the absolute passivity of matter is one of those errors which are inevitable in the progress of knowledge—one of the "clay moulds in which the bells of scientific truth are cast." ”

“ If a concept be, in the language of Sir W. Hamilton, a "bundle of attributes"—as for purposes of discursive reasoning it undoubtedly is—then every increase or diminution of this bundle is in effect the formation of a new concept; and Mill's objection that we cannot think by means of concepts, because in reasoning we bring before the mind a varying number of the attributes composing them, is seen to be founded on the mistaken assumption that for every object there is but one corresponding concept, the truth being that an object may be represented in thought by concepts without number. ”

“ In revising our successive judgments concerning a body's course or velocity, we take for granted that there is an actual course or an actual velocity—we take for granted that there are fixed points in space with respect to which all motions are absolute; and we find it impossible to rid ourselves of this idea. Nevertheless, absolute motion cannot even be imagined, much less known. ”

“ That the impossibility or difficulty of imagining a thing (which, however, must be carefully distinguished from the absolute impossibility of forming certain concepts, of which I shall presently speak) is no evidence for or against its reality, is a truth of the greatest moment to the student of natural science. ”

“ The true formula of matter is mass x force, or inertia x force.
We now have before us, in full view, one of the fundamental fallacies of the atomic theory. This fallacy consists in the delusion that the conceptual constituents of matter can be grasped as separate and real entities. The corpuscular atomists take the element of inertia and treat it as real by itself, while Boscovich, Faraday, and all those who define atoms as "centres of force," seek to realize the corresponding element, force, as an entity by itself. In both cases elements of reality are mistaken for kinds of reality. ”

“ Now, the most obtrusive form of matter is the solid, and for this reason it is that form which is first cognized by the infant intellect of mankind, and thus serves as the basis for the subsequent recognition of other forms. ”

“ All evolution proceeds from the relatively Indeterminate to the relatively Determinate, and from the comparatively Simple to the comparatively Complex. And (confining our attention, for the moment, to the two extreme terms of the evolution, the solid and the gas, and ignoring the intermediate liquid) a comparison of the gaseous with the solid state of matter at once shows that the former is, not the end, but the beginning of the evolution. ”

“ Upon the whole, it would seem that the validity of the first proposition of the atomic theory is not sustained by the facts. Even if the assumed unchangeability of the supposed ultimate constituent particles of matter presented itself, upon its own showing, as more than a bare reproduction of an observed fact in the form of an hypothesis, and could be dignified with the name of a generalization or of a theory, it would still be obnoxious to the criticism that it is a generalization from facts crudely observed and imperfectly apprehended. ”