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The knowledge we have now gained concerning the disappearance and appearance of physical water in the heights of the atmosphere will enable us to shake off one of the most characteristic errors to which the onlooker-consciousness has succumbed in its estimation of nature. This is the interpretation of thunderstorms, and particularly of lightning, which has held sway since the days of Benjamin Franklin.
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With this picture of solid matter as being held in spatial extension by its subjection to gravity and levity alike, we proceed to a study of the liquid and gaseous states of matter, while taking into account the role of heat in bringing these states about.
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If this, then, was Mayer’s belief, what was it that convinced him of the existence of a numerical balance between appearing and vanishing energy, even before he had any experimental proof?
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To ordinary scientific thinking this may sound paradoxical, but in reality it is not. Observation of the nature of solid matter has led atomistic thought to regard a physical body as a heap of molecules so far apart that by far the greater part of the volume occupied by the body is just ’empty’ space. In the scientific picture of molecules constituting a physical body, of atoms constituting the molecules, of electrons, protons, etc., constituting the atoms, all separated by spaces far exceeding the size of the elementary particles themselves, we find reflected, in a form comprehensible to the onlooker-consciousness, the fact that matter, even in the solid state, is kept in spatial extension by a field of force relating it to the cosmic periphery.
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A large part of the work here involved could be saved were it only to be acknowledged that the soil owes the natural occurrence of the proper elements to a process which the plants themselves bring about in the soil, if men refrain from hindering them by cleverly thought-out methods of cultivation which fail to reckon with the nature of a living organism.
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Before developing our own picture of a thunderstorm let us recognize that science has found it necessary to reverse the explanation so long in Vogue. Whereas it was formerly taken for granted – and the assumption was supposed to rest upon experimental proof – that the condensing of atmospheric vapour which accompanied lightning was the consequence of a release of electrical tension by the lightning, the view now held is that the electrical tension responsible for the occurrence of lightning is itself the effect of a sudden condensing process of atmospheric moisture.
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Following out our method of seeking to gain knowledge of a phenomenon by regarding it as part of a greater whole, let us ask what sort of change a portion of physical substance undergoes in its relation to the earth as a whole when, for instance, through the influence of heat, it passes from a solid to a liquid state. Here we must keep in mind that it is part of the nature of a liquid to have no form of its own. The only natural boundary of a liquid substance is its upper surface. Since this surface always lies parallel with the surface of the earth it forms part of a sphere, the centre point of which is identical with that of the gravitational centre of the earth. The passage of a portion of matter from solid to liquid thus signifies that it ceases to possess a centre of gravity of its own and is now merely obedient to the general gravity-field of the earth. We can thus speak of a transition of matter from the individual to the planetary condition. This is what heat brings about when a solid body melts.
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Later in this book there will be occasion to introduce a concept of number in tune with our qualitative world-outlook. What led Mayer to look upon number as an expression of existing spiritual associations in nature will then become clear. Let this much be said here, that number in the universe has quite different functions from that of serving merely as an expression for a total of calculable items, or as a means of comparing spatial distances. It is in the nature of the onlooker-consciousness that it is unable to interpret numerical equality between natural phenomena save as indicating the presence of an equal number of calculable objects or of spatial movements of equal magnitude. It was therefore consistent for such a consciousness to regard the discovery by Mayer of the mechanical heat-equivalent as a confirmation of the existing mechanical conception of heat.
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A large part of the heat used in melting is known to be absorbed by the substance during the process of melting. This is indicated by the thermometer remaining at the temperature of the melting-point once this has been reached, until the whole of the melting substance has liquefied. Physics here speaks of ‘free’ heat becoming ‘latent’. From the Goethean point of view we see heat passing through a metamorphosis. Whereas, previously, heat was perceptible to our sense of warmth, it now manifests as a gravity-denying property of matter.
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Let us be clear what it is that occurs when a plant exhibits any of the observed abnormalities. Expressed in a Goethean manner, these are the consequence of an insufficient direction of the organic processes in the plant body by the spiritual plant-type underlying it. That which Ruskin called the ‘spirit’ of the plant, and to which he drew attention in his aphorism ‘Stand by Form against Force’ (by ‘form’ all the peculiar qualities of the plant are to be understood), is unable to express itself in full measure. Now we know that, in order to unfold its activities on the physical plane, spirit requires ‘young’ matter – that is, matter which is either in, or has just emerged from, a purely dynamic state. Normally a definite spiritual type co-ordinates the dynamic functions present in the superphysical sphere of nature in the manner required to give the plant-organism its appropriate form. As, through the action of the type, these functions are brought down from the sphere of levity into that of gravity, they condense to the corresponding material elements and thus reach the soil in material form via the physical organism of the plant.