Archimedes

Archimedes by Lancelot Law Whyte

Lancelot Law Whyte argues that physics, biology, and psychology are converging on a single scientific synthesis, because all three now confront the same underlying problem: the electrical processes behind radiation and chemical combination. He opens by noting that major ideas often arise independently in several minds at once, as with non-Euclidean geometry (Gauss, Lobatschewsky, Bolyai) and evolution (Goethe, St Hilaire, Dr Darwin, and Wallace's convergence with Darwin), and treats recent physicists' hints that light and life are related as a similar sign of an idea whose time has come. The core argument concerns reversibility. Newtonian physics, and the wider system built on it (matter, force, energy, wave mechanics), implicitly assumes that elementary processes are reversible in time, modeled on gravitation. But organisms and atomic radiation processes are irreversible, like a cooling cup of tea, and cannot be adequately described by reversible laws. Whyte surveys competing interpretations of atomic discontinuity (the view that electrons have freedom of choice; Heisenberg's uncertainty; Schrödinger's wave picture) and proposes combining them: the particle-structure view of the atom is wrong because it manufactures false discontinuities, and a new formulation using fewer quantities is needed, built on the irreversibility of elementary processes rather than their reversibility. He frames this as a live intellectual battle, with Einstein and Eddington on the side of reversible, time-symmetric law, and Bergson and Whitehead on the side of real, irreversible temporal process; Born's quantum dynamics, which treats all quantum processes as irreversible, is cited as supporting evidence. Whyte criticizes Einstein's relativity postulate (that physical knowledge reduces to space-time coincidences) as neglecting both the role of time in perception and the demonstrated irreversibility of processes like radioactive disintegration. He also discusses the astronomers' discovery that the earth's rotation is slowing and irregular, forcing physics to redefine its time standard independently of the earth, and suggests the atom itself may eventually serve as a theoretical clock. Turning to life, Whyte poses a practical question: could an infinitely wise physicist synthesize a man from chemicals? He constructs a speculative table of minimum times required for successive stages—from simple inorganic compounds (a thousandth of a second) up through colloids, protoplasm, unicellular organisms, flagellates, and mammals including Homo sapiens (a million years)—arguing that heredity itself is a record of accumulated time, and that organisms can only be built through this slow synthetic process, not assembled directly. He envisions an "International Institute of Evolutionary Research," perhaps under a League of Nations and based in Switzerland, that could in principle guide artificial evolution, while cautioning about the ethics and risks (a "World's Evolutionary Zoo," a wrathful god punishing this Tower of Babel) of such an undertaking. He then proposes that the laws of life must be formulated in terms of the age of a system since some initial moment, contrasting this with Maxwell's principle that physical laws should be timeless and age-independent. He classifies natural processes into two types: reversible ones whose laws don't depend on the system's age (gravitational, mechanical motion), and irreversible ones whose laws depend on elapsed time (chemical combination, growth, evolution, radioactivity, heat and light phenomena). Two hydrogen atoms combining into a molecule illustrate an irreversible process with a definite teleological quality—moving necessarily toward a consummation—without implying conscious purpose. Whyte then stages a dialogue between a physicist, a biologist, and a non-behaviourist psychologist. The physicist argues that irreversible atomic processes already display unconscious purpose, leaving organic growth and memory as the remaining problems for physics to address. Against the psychologist's insistence on conscious mind, the physicist argues consciousness is not a single state but a graded series of awareness-types corresponding to degrees of organic integration, and that mind and matter are not separate interacting substances but two aspects—temporal and spatial—of one underlying organic process (citing Professor Alexander's "Time is the mind of Space," which he inverts). The psychologist, a practicing determinist with his patients, agrees in principle but admits he lacks the courage to apply such determinism to himself, and the physicist responds by sketching how "organic determinism" could reshape moral judgment and validate the artist's unconscious creative drive. Whyte closes with explicit forecasts: before 1940, atomic theory will be simplified by discovering relationships among fundamental constants (e, m, M, c, h), direct electron-velocity measurements will revise current assumptions, and a new irreversible physical scheme will emerge, with electron tracks as natural clocks; a hypothesis is offered that the time-interval between two points on an electron track is a function of the track's length and curvature. Biology, he predicts, will erase the sharp line between inanimate and living systems, identify a life-function "f" governing organisms (whose increase marks being alive and whose stagnation marks death), control diseases like cancer by understanding this central process (by around 1950), ease childbirth by raising vitality, and manage heredity via control of developmental tempo, alongside safe rejuvenation and a stabilizing (though not utopian) reduction of disease. Psychology, guided by Gestalt-theorie, will develop a synthetic (temporal, law-based) method to complement spatial analysis, defining organic unity as a system governed by one irreversible law directed toward a common end, and will guide therapeutic practice toward restoring harmonious co-ordination of function rather than imposing intellectual or moral ideals. He ends by linking light, life, and consciousness as bound by an undiscovered natural law that physics, by illuminating it, will give new hope to humanity.

By Lancelot Law Whyte · First published 1948 · Genre: Scientific Essay, Philosophy of Science, Physics/Natural Philosophy · 6 chapters · 14,866 words

First lines

One of the most fascinating features in the history of thought is that on several occasions an important new idea has come simultaneously to independent minds. Thus after Euclid's geometry had remained without a rival for two thousand years the conception of an alternative non-Euclidean system was reached separately by Gauss, Lobatschewsky, and Bolyai during the years 1820-30. Bolyai's father, while ignorant of the fact that Gauss had already made the same discoveries, wrote to his son urging him to publish his results and used the following prophetic words:

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physics · biology · psychology · consciousness · time · evolution · heredity · quantum mechanics · atomic theory · electrons · atoms · irreversibility

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