Sir W. Thomson’s moss-grown fragment of a shattered world is not yet
forgotten. In the current number of the _Cornhill Magazine_ (January,
1872) it is very severely handled; the more severely, because the
writer, though treating the subject quite popularly, shows the
fallacy of the hypothesis, even when regarded from the point of view
of Sir W. Thomson’s own special department of study. That an eminent
mathematician should make a great slip when he ventures upon geological
or physiological ground is not at all surprising; it is, in fact, quite
to be expected, as there can be no doubt that the close study of _pure_
mathematics, by directing the mind to processes of calculation rather
than to phenomena, induces that sublime indifference to facts which has
characterized the purely mathematical intellect of all ages.
It is not surprising that a philosopher who has been engaged in
measuring the imaginary diameter, describing the imaginary oscillations
and gyrations of imaginary atoms, and the still more complex imaginary
behavior of the imaginary constituents of the imaginary atmospheres
by which the mathematical imagination has surrounded these imaginary
atoms, should overlook the vulgar fact that neither mosses nor other
vegetables, nor even their seeds, can possibly retain their vitality
when alternately exposed to the temperature of a blast furnace,
and that of two or three hundred degrees below the freezing point;
but it is rather surprising that the purely mathematical basis of
this very original hypothesis of so great a mathematician should be
mathematically fallacious—in plain language, a mathematical blunder.
In order to supply the seed-bearing meteoric fragment by which each
planet is to be stocked with life, it is necessary, according to Sir
W. Thomson, that two worlds—one at least flourishing with life—shall
be smashed; and, in order to get them smashed with a sufficient amount
of frequency to supply the materials for his hypothesis, the learned
President of the British Association has, in accordance with the
customary ingenuity of mathematical theorists, worked out the necessary
mathematical conditions, and states with unhesitating mathematical
assurance that—“It is as sure that collisions must occur between great
masses moving through space, as it is that ships, steered without
intelligence directed to prevent collision, could not cross and recross
the Atlantic for thousands of years with immunity from collision.”
The author of the paper in the _Cornhill_ denies this very positively,
and without going into the mathematical details, points out the basis
upon which it may be mathematically refuted—viz., that all such worlds
are traveling in fixed or regular orbits around their primaries or
suns, while each of these primaries travels in its own necessary path,
carrying with it all its attendants, which still move about him, just
as though he had no motion of his own.
These are the conclusions of Newtonian dynamics, the sublime simplicity
of which contrasts so curiously with the complex dreams of the modern
atom-splitters, and which make a further and still more striking
contrast by their exact and perfect accordance with actual and visible
phenomena.
Newton has taught us that there can be no planets traveling at random
like the Sir W. Thomson’s imaginary ships with blind pilots, and by
following up his reasoning, we reach the conclusion, that among all
the countless millions of worlds that people the infinity of space,
there is no more risk of collision than there is between any two of the
bodies that constitute our own solar system.
All the observations of astronomers, both before and since the
discovery of the telescope, confirm this conclusion. The long nightly
watching of the Chaldean shepherds, the star-counting, star-gauging,
star-mapping, and other laborious gazing of mediæval and modern
astronomers, have failed to discover any collision, or any motion
tending to collision, among the myriads of heavenly bodies whose
positions and movements have been so faithfully and diligently studied.
Thus, the hypothesis of creation which demands the destruction of two
worlds in order to effect the sowing of a seed, is as inconsistent with
sound dynamics as it is repugnant to common sense.
This subject suggests a similar one, which was discussed a few months
since at the Acadamy of Sciences of Paris. On January 30th last M. St.
Meunier read a paper on “The mode of rupture of a star, from which
meteors are derived.” The author starts with the assumption that
meteors have been produced by the rupture of a world, basing this
assumption upon the arguments he has stated in previous papers. He
discards altogether Sir W. Thomson’s idea of a collision between two
worlds, but works out a conclusion quite as melancholy.
He begins, like most other builders of cosmical theories, with the
hypothesis that this and all the other worlds of space began their
existence in a condition of nebulous infancy; that they gradually
condensed into molten liquids, and then cooled down till they obtained
a thin outside crust of solid matter, resting upon a molten globe
within; that this crust then gradually thickened as the world grew
older and cooled down by radiation. I will not stop to discuss this
nebular and cooling-down hypothesis at present, though it is but fair
to state that “I don’t believe a bit of it.”
Taking all this for granted—a considerable assumption—M. St. Meunier
reasons very ably upon what must follow, if we further assume that each
world is somehow supplied with air and water, and that the atmosphere
and the ocean of each world are limited and unconnected with those of
any other world, or with any general interstellar medium.
What, then, will happen as worlds grow old? As they cool down,
they must contract; the liquid inside can manage this without any
inconvenience to itself, but not so with the outer spherical shell of
solid matter. As the inner, or hotter part of this contracts, the cool
outside must crumple up in order to follow it, and thus mountain chains
and great valleys, lesser hills and dales, besides faults and slips,
dykes, earthquakes, volcanoes, etc., are explained.
According to M. St. Meunier, the moon has reached a more advanced
period of cosmical existence than the earth. She is our senior; and
like the old man who shows his gray hairs and tottering limbs to
inconsiderate youth, she shines a warning upon our gay young world,
telling her that—