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Topic: Keely Chronology Stack Section: Dogmatism of Science Table of Contents to this Topic |
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The Dogmatism of Science. BY MRS. BLOOMFIELD MOORE. New York Home Journal, vol. II, July, 1895 Henry Thomas Buckle, in a paper read at the weekly evening meeting of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, Friday, March 19th, 1858, said that "an exclusive employment of the inductive philosophy was contracting the minds of physical inquirers and gradually shutting out speculations respecting causes and entities; limiting the student to questions of distribution, and forbidding to him questions of origin; making everything hang on two sets of laws, namely, those of co-existence and of sequence; and declaring beforehand how far future knowledge can carry us. But," added this great man, "we shall not always be satisfied with seeing the laws of nature rest on this empirical basis; and the most advanced thinkers are looking to a period when we shall deal with problems of a much higher kind than any yet solved; when we shall incorporate mind and matter into a single study; when we shall seek to raise the veil and penetrate into the secret of things." No man nor woman of intelligence, who is conversant with the writings of "the most advanced thinkers" of our age, can fail to see that this time is near at hand; and yet dogmatic science refuses to put itself in a position where it could announce that the veil is already raised, and, to quote the words of Prof. Lascelles-Scott1, that "the door which prejudice has declared to be shut and bolted is even now ajar, and gleams of light are struggling over the threshold from Keely's discoveries." Of course, new hypotheses should not meet with too ready an acceptance, and the professor, with admirable caution, takes the text of his review of ÒKeely and His Discoveries," from the Syracuse philosopherÑEpicharnusÑ ÒThe very nerves and sinews of knowledge consist in believing nothing rashly." But with such evidence as he sets before his readers (in the October number of THE NEW SCIENCE REVIEW), the determined blindness of dogmatic science should not be permitted to delay, to another century, the general promulgation of truth which have been already established by the testimony of some of the most distinguished American men of science of this age. The fact that there are, as yet, no commercial profits from Keely's discoveries is all that retards the promulgation of these truths; but the law allows no patents on new truths nor on a principle of nature. Until the vibratory circuit, operated by this costless current of force drawn direct from space, is connected with some patentable device, Keely's discovery has no more commercial value than Newton's discovery of gravity. Therefore, as science still denies the fundamental doctrines on which this new system of physics is based, the only hope lies in the prolongation of Keely life until commerce, instead of science, is able to make the announcement; unless the press, with its gigantic power, lends itself to the efforts now being made to bring before the public the present position of Keely in his great work of evolution. Of another discoverer of unknown truths the poet Cowley wrote: "Bacon, like Moses, led us forth at last; The barren wilderness he passed; Did on the very border stand Of the blest, promised land; And from the mountainÕs top of his exalted wit, Saw it himself, and showed us it. But life did never to one man allow. Time to discover worlds and conquer to." Scientific caution is necessary at all times, and more especially so with discoveries which antagonize the established order of what is supposed to be scientific truth. But of quite a different nature is that stolid and contemptuous indifference manifested by those "lights of science," who consider it derogatory to their dignity to interest themselves in an examination of claims that, if proved to be true, would revolutionize the accepted dogmas of science. When Italy was disturbed by Galileo's discovery, the same thing occurred. It was a professor of the University at Padua who refused Galileo's invitation to look through his telescope and obtain proof of his assertion that "the world moves." The world of thought moves faster [now] than in the days of Galileo. Under the pressure of outside opinion and the gradual infiltration of new truths, men of science will, in the end, be awakened into honest and serious attention to Keely's claims. New truths pass more quickly, now than formerly, through stages of blind, unreasoning opposition. This improvement does not spring out of any change in human nature in scientific men, for their "good-fellowship," among themselves, is never extended beyond those researchers who maintain orthodox views and support each other in their claims. The hope of Keely's life being prolonged "to conquer too" (nearly three score years and ten as he is now), would be much more likely to be realized if the certainties of the scientific value of his discoveries were made known more widely, together with the uncertainties of his living to complete all that is necessary before there can be any financial gain therein. Notwithstanding the persistent denial of physicists, who have not examined into Keely's claims, the advancing wave of interest in his work cannot be kept back, for it will be sustained in its course by the ever-increasing pressure of a larger outside public of intelligent and interested minds, not wedded by long association of thought to special systems, and having no motives of self-preservation prompting them to repel what appeals to their intellectual capacity of comprehension with much greater force than to minds educated on rigid lines of thought, as is the mind of the physicist. Such minds, says Hovenden, from the necessities of the case, are the least capable of solving a problem which can only be solved by views that are foreign to the fundamental ideas in which the physicist has been educated. The distinguished men of science, Profs. Leidy, Brinton and Koenig, who investigated Keely's work in 1889-90, testing the current of force produced with the most sensitive galvanometer of the University of Pennsylvania, publicly asserted that it was free of electricity, magnetism or any known force scoffing at the less than school-boy knowledge, which had, in 1876, pronounced it to be compressed air. Ricarde-Seaver, an European electrician, who, after investigating, returned to London and gave testimony in favor of the discoverer, was asked to withdraw his name, when the balloting was about to take place for membership at the Athen¾um Club, by the very man of science2 who had proposed him sixteen years before, the only reason given being his espousal of Keely's claims as a discoverer. Such an experience (and more notably the recent experience of Prof. Oliver J. Lodge) proves that the founder of new systems must look to the power of the press, which is greater than that of the sword, when help is needed in making known to the world the importance of newly-discovered truths not accepted in general by those whose canons they controvert. One of the most widely-known English physicists,3 who for more than ten years has followed Keely's progress in his experimental researches, when asked in 1891 why he was not availing to make public his views of their nature, replied: "If I am called before a bar of justice to give testimony, I am cross questioned by judge and counsel. It is the same at the bar of science. I cannot say what I think. I must saw what I know, what I believe, what I have seen." As long as the so-called "Lights of Science" hold the attitude that they take toward lesser lights, who are interested in Keely's work, no physicists of note can be expected to interest themselves in Keely's claims publicly. Prof. Lodge, in closing a recent article, "Unusual Physical Phenomena," writes: "And now, finally, let me disclaim all missionary spirit in this long exposition. The business of a scientific man is the pursuit of natural knowledge and the imparting of such portion of it as has by long trial become recognized and orthodoxÑi. e., such portion as people are willing to receive. For I need hardly remind the reader that at one time the science of nature, or physics itself, was very far from being orthodox, and that in past days promulgators of any new truth had to pass, not through the fire of a little friendly badinage and ridicule, but through fire of a much fiercer and more searching character; unless, indeed, they recanted their 'errors.' Instruction in orthodox branches of science is now permitted to youth; an unorthodox department of knowledge may have to wait many years before instruction in it can be willingly received, even by adult and experienced minds. Let it wait! The instinct of an investigator and teacher is to set forth, as best he may, such natural truth as he is able to perceive - such truth as the interworking of his era and his opportunities have revealed to him - and there he must leave it. For its reception by the human race, he is not responsible. "The universe is not so simple a matter as men in this century have been apt to think. All we ask for on the part of our contemporaries is an attitude of mind willing to give to new truths a chance of life. If it be of God, they cannot indeed ultimately overthrow it; but they may, by determined blindness, seriously delay its coming, and entirely prevent its reception in their own age. ÒI ask for no hasty belief. No one can usefully believe things of which he has had no experience. He may say that the statements of those who support them are or are not entitled to respect, and that, if he were forced by a pistol at his head to take sides prematurely, he would range himself on one side or the other; but till he has had some sort of first-hand experience his belief and his disbelief are equally worthless, except in so far as they may lead him to devote some portion of his time to a study of what has been recorded on the subject, and to an unprejudiced, critical contemplation of whatever phenomena may in the progress of events unfold themselves before him." The public is now asked in the same spirit to give attention to Keely's present position in an unorthodox department of true scientific research. The long course of experiments made by English and Continental physicists in the case of the medium Eusebia, seems to have proved nothing more than that obsession did not cease with the days of the Apostles. In fact, Mr. Keely is opposed to these mediumistic experiments with subjects possessing abnormal will power. Hypnotism, animal magnetism, suggestion, etc., he considers are so little understood in their workings, that it is like an obstruction placed on a railway track: the engine may dash it aside, or it may wreck the train. The experimental researching of Keely, in manifestations of will power, is of an entirely safe nature, made with dynamic apparatus instead of on the human brain and the physical organism. Since the insults to which he was subjected several years ago by a professor of physics who visited his work-shop, Mr. Keely has refused to make explanations of the operations of his instruments to those physicists who have reluctantly condescended to inspect his aerial navigation machinery, preferring to wait until the propellor is able to speak for itself. At present, however, for certain business reasons, it has become necessary for him to explain the operation of the machine, and Dr. Tuttle, physicist at the U. S. Mint in Philadelphia, has been chosen to receive this instruction. The series of experiments which Mr. Keely was preparing to give (as set down on page 464 of the April number of THE NEW SCIENCE REVIEW) before an expert committee, will therefore be made before Dr. Tuttle; but no public announcement will follow on account of the business complications alluded to. It has become evident that an authoritative public announcement of the completion of Keely's long work of evolution, in a machine adapted to navigation of the air, would facilitate stock jobbing operations. That such undesirable results may be avoided, this statement must be delayed until Mr. Keely's plan of reorganization of the old Keely Motor Company has been accepted by the shareholders of its stock, and a settlement made with them, as set down in his circular No. 1. (The circular will be found in the advertisement pages of this number of THE NEW SCIENCE REVIEW). When Mr. Keely has effected this settlement and completed his railway traction engine, then, and not before, will the stock of the Keely Motor Company possess marketable value. The expert American electricians and engineers, who were to have formed the committee of investigation, prefer to wait until this is accomplished, lest their names be used to facilitate Wall street operations in Keely Motor stock. Mr. C. W. Baker, of Engineering News, upon withdrawal of the invitation that had been extended to him (in accordance with an intimation from him that he would like to pursue the subject farther than he had been able to do), expressed his regret that the plans formed for giving a wide publicity to the result of the demonstrations had been frustrated from want of cooperation on the part of the Board of Directors of the Keely Motor Company. Nikola Tesla, for reasons that need not be explained, would not have been able to serve on the committee. It is well known that he is striving to draw power from space by purely scientific methods, which Keely succeeded in doing in 1893 by "unscientific methods." An earnest effort has been put forth to induce this distinguished man of genius to acquaint himself with KeelyÕs system of aerial navigation, in order that he may more quickly attain one of the goals he is aiming to reach - that of producing light devoid of heat. It is now a number of years since Mr. Tesla crossed the border line of the circle in which all other electricians are working, on their treadmill round, but he still remains in the interatomic field of research, apparently unmindful of the triple conditions that govern electricity in the relation which it sustains, in that field, to the first order of the luminous. Tesla's great penetration may enable him eventually to attain his aims on orthodox lines of research; but, in the writer's opinion, were he to acquaint himself with Keely's system of resonance, it would be but a short time before he could induce electrical alternation of such an intense degree as to produce a light as susceptible to the retina as is solar light. Even should Tesla succeed in drawing power from space, on his own line of research, his position would still be remote from all the conditions governing magnetic and electric phenomena in the sympathetic field, where Keely has solved the problem of navigation of the air. Keely calls this realm the interetheric or celestial, in contradistinction to the terrestrial or interatomic realm, which Tesla is researching. The terrestrial sympathetic forces are subservient to the celestial sympathetic. Tesla stands as it were on the bridge which connects the primary two-thirds of the electric streamÑthe subdominant current with the dominant. Even should he hook on to the dominant, he would still be subserved to the terrestrial neutral; far in the rear of sympathetic union to radiating celestial outreach,4 the connecting link of which exists in the interluminous, and remote from all the conditions that govern electricity sympathetically. Therefore Tesla is wrong when he says that Òelectric phenomena and ether phenomena are identical;" nor will he arrive at a true conclusion, as to the relation or association of the two, until he has brought about an alternation of that intensity which induces light visible to the eye. Even then he will not have reached the compound interethericÑthe border line to the introductory luminous. It is evident that Tesla already comprehends the law governing transmission and dissociation in electrical alternation with regard to its reception by the physical organism, whereby an increase of the number of volts that prove fatal to life are harmless, and given without any risk to the subject. The ear is not susceptible to the vibrations of inaudible sounds; nor the eye to those of light beyond the number necessary for sight. A wheel having five spokes and making ten revolutions per minute gives fifty alternations on the spokes, which are readily counted by the eye; whereas an increase in the revolutions, to five hundred in ten minutes, increases the alternations of the spokes beyond the power of the retina to receive and count. It is the same with electrical alternation in regard to its receptiveness by the physical organism. Phenomenal as it may seem to those ignorant of the fact, this is a standard truth in sympathetic physics, which Tesla's penetration did not fail to discover. The plane of research that he occupies in regard to electrical phenomena, is as much above that of his fellow electricians as is the plane occupied by Keely (in researching the problem of aerial navigation) beyond the realm in which those inventors are working, who are constructing balloons and flying machines on various principles, while still ignorant of a force in nature that is antagonistic to gravity and overcomes it; thus making navigation of the air, with ships of thousand of tons burthen, both possible and perfectly safe. Electricians will no longer remain captive in their domain when Keely's system is published to the world; as it will be when he has effected the settlement that he seeks. If this settlement is not effected, without the delay of litigations his secrets will die with him, in all probability, for no one but himself knows the process by which dead metal is sensitized so as to be operated upon, as the brain is operated upon by celestial radiation. Were Tesla and Edison brought to a proper appreciation of Keely's methods, were they to make themselves acquainted with his system of sympathetic physics, what might not be expected of them in view of their brilliant achievements on a lower plane of research? The march of science would then be a triumphal one indeed. Let Keely be known to Tesla and Edison as the "great discoverer" which Professor Koenig called him in 1891, and the press will then be ready to publish what has already been accomplished for science. This can be done without affecting the stock market, as long as there is no engine to base speculation upon. Why should science wait upon commerce? Is it not enough that "the whole world problem" is solved by this new system of physics, demonstrating, as it does by dynamic apparatus, the truth of Professor Ladd's words in his recent work, "Body and Mind," when he says, "The Being of the world, of which all particular beings are parts, must be so conceived of as that in it can be found the One Ground of all interrelated existencies and activities." The cosmical law of sympathetic association, as set down in Keely's system of Vibratory Spiritual Physics, has solved this greatest of all problemsÑboth psychical and physicalÑ the problem of the human will. Shall this system, founded upon knowledge known to the ancients, which has been lost out of the world for centuries, only be regained to be lost to this age because of the dogmatism of science? There is a warning in Cowley's words, which men of science will do well to heed: "But life did never to one man allow Time to discover and to conquer too." l Physicist at the Government Physical and Chemical Laboratories, Forest Gate, Essex. 2 Lord Kelvin. 3 Prof. Dewar, of The Royal Institution of Great Britain. 4 The sympathetic outreach of negative attraction is born of the celestial and impregnates every mass that floats in space, seeking out all magnetic or electric conditions. All these masses are subservient to celestial outreach. It is the power that holds the planetary masses in their orbital ranges of oscillatory action. Magnetism is static. Sympathetic negative attraction reaches from planet to planet, but electricity does not, nor does magnetism. All the magnets in the world could not induce rotation, no matter how differentiated, but polar negative attraction induces rotation, as exemplified scores of times in an insulated compass-needle before the professors of the Pennsylvania University in 1890. (See page 279, "Keely and his Discoveries." The Transatlantic Publishing Company, 63 Fifth Avenue, New York.) |
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