The Cosmic Sea

When I was a kid I was assured that radio waves propagated itself through something illusive called the "Aether". I was told that...

"... the easiest way to break into the wireless game is to put up an aerial and hook up a receiving set to it; you can then listen-in and hear what is going on in the all-pervading ether around you, and you will soon find enough to make things highly entertaining... There is a strikingly close resemblance between sound waves and the way they are set up in the air by a mechanically vibrating body, such as a steel spring or a tuning fork, and electric waves and the way they are set up in the ether by a current oscillating in a circuit." (Frederick Collins, The Radio Amateur's Handbook, A Complete, Authentic and Informative Work on Wireless Telegraphy and Telephony).

I took that to be gospel even though way back in 1887 already, Michelson and Morley conducted experiments to detect the so-called "aether drift". They ruled out the existence of the aether. "This, in turn,", says controversial physicist, Ken Seto, "led to the erroneous conclusion that there was no substance of any kind occupying space." Subsequent experiments arrived at similar conclusions. Albert Einstein agreed. So, by the time I came to read Taylor and Wheeler's Spacetime Physics in 1965 I needed to unlearn the Doctrine of Aether from Collins' "authentic and informative work on wireless". The Aether was now but a figment of the imagination.

But then, in 1987 EW Silvertooth performed experiments with more sophisticated equipment and detected the existence of the Aether! (Experimental Detection of the Ether", Speculations in Science and Technology, Vol.10, No.1, page 3 (1987),   http://160.114.99.91/astrojan/silverto.pdf). I was in a quandary once again. It seems that Collins and my old wireless textbooks might be correct after all! Oh, the shifting sands of physics and theology.

I don't know with absolute certainty whether the Aether exists or not. I cannot say whether it can be measured or not. No doubt Heisenberg's “Uncertainty Principle” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle) applies here too. I don't know if Ken Seto is a "genius or a madman" (http://sci.tech-archive.net/Archive/sci.physics/2005-02/8496.html). I have no means of validating Silvertooth's conclusions. Does the Aether permeate all that is? We live with the questions. Whatever, this is a healthy reminder to me that even respected scientists can be at odds with each other. This also brought my attention to something more. It was South African philosopher-statesman, Jan Smuts, who suggested that we are much more than just the sum of our anatomical parts. There might be more to the Aether than meets the eye too.

Jan Smuts wrote in his Holism and Evolution....

"This whole is not an artificial result of its parts; there is something more than the parts, and this something appears to be in definite relation with them, influenced by them and again influencing them... "

(From Holism and Evolution, p.78)

In another remarkable passage Smuts wrote:

"For we are indeed one with Nature, her genetic fibres run through all our being, our physical organs connect us with millions of years of her history; our minds are full of immemorial paths of pre-human experience.

"Our ear for music, our eye for art carry us back to the early beginnings of animal life on this globe. Press but a button in our brain and the gaunt spectres of the dim forgotten past rise once more before us; the ghostly dreaded forms of the primeval Fear loom before us and we tremble all over with inexplicable fright. And then again some distant sound, some call of bird or smell of wild plants, or some sunrise or sunset glow in the distant clouds, some mixture of light and shade on the mountains may suddenly throw an unearthly spell over the spirit, lead it forth from the deep chambers and set it panting and wondering with inexpressible emotion. For the overwrought mind there is no peace like nature's, for the wounded spirit there is no healing like hers. There are indeed times when human companionship becomes unbearable, and we fly to nature for that silent sympathy and communion which she alone can give.

"Some of the deepest emotional experiences of my life have come to me on the many nights I have spent under the open African sky, and I am sure my case has not been singular in this respect.

"The intimate rapport with nature is one of the most precious things in life. Nature is indeed very close to us; sometimes closer than hands and feet, of which in truth she is but the extension. The emotional appeal of nature is tremendous, sometimes almost more than one can bear."

(From Holism and Evolution, p.336f)

Intuitively we know we are part of, even integral, to a greater whole. By some mysterious ethereal thread we are spiritually connected to all space and all time. Mystics and Scientists testify to this. Gregg Braden writes about the "Divine Matrix". Paul said something similar to the Greeks, "For in Him we live, and move, and have our being; as also certain of your own poets have said, `For we are also His offspring.'" (Act 17:28).

Eager for Thee I ask and pant;
So strong, the principle divine
Carries me out, with sweet constraint,
Till all my hallowed soul is Thine;
Plunged in the Godhead's deepest sea,
And lost in Thine immensity.
            - Charles Wesley, MHB 299



©Colin G Garvie HomePage: http://www.garvies.co.za/