Atoms and rays : an introduction to modern views on atomic structure & radiation / by Sir Oliver Lodge.

  • Oliver Lodge
Date:
1924
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Atoms and rays : an introduction to modern views on atomic structure & radiation / by Sir Oliver Lodge. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    i] Evolution of Life and Mind The visible and tangible masses aggregate still further under gravitation into planets and suns. And the suns are so immense, their atomic jostlings are so intense, that they send out powerful and continuous radiation into the Ether which, falling upon the planets, keeps them warm and enables the processes of vegetation to go on. Under this stimulus, therefore, the molecular aggregates no longer form only inorganic materials. They begin to group themselves into still more complex structures, and build themselves up into a material known as Proto¬ plasm. And then, mysteriously—at least, mysteriously to our present knowledge—a new phenomenon occurs. The protoplasm becomes, as it were, self-moving; no longer driven only by external forces, but exerting its own forces; crawling about, assimilating other materials and building them up into its own structure; not, like crystals, dependent on the kind of food supplied, but being able to utilise all manner of food, and yet building up its own well-defined and characteristic body. This mysterious phenomenon, which makes its appear¬ ance when the organic molecules have attained suffi¬ cient complexity, and when they are stimulated by ether waves as received from the sun or other luminous body, is called “Life”;—the lower kind vegetable life, and the higher kind animal life. And the animal life can not only assimilate food and grow; it can, when grown sufficiently, split into two, and then again into two, and thus increase in number. We see the beginning of what is called Reproduction, which develops again into many and various forms. The Evolution of Mind All this seems to lend itself to the process of Evolution. So that no longer Life is limited to the simple cells with which it began, but the cells themselves can aggregate