ACHILLES AND THE TORTOISE
From a philosophy a science is derived; from a science, an engineering system can be deduced. From engineering come the blueprints, and the machine-shop directions. And the philosophy of present-day science, summated in Einstein's relativity, can-not lead to the interstellar cruiser. But another philosophy º ?
In the pioneer days of wireless telegraphy the wife of one of the scientists engaged in developing the new invention was asked by her friends whether she could explain to them what her husband was doing. "Of course," she said, "my husband explained it to me just yesterday. Imagine a very long dog. His forelegs are in Washington when his hindlegs are still in New York. If you pinch this dog in New York, he will bark in Washington. Wireless telegraphy is exactly the same - but without dog."
Something similar could be said about interstellar space-travel. It will be space-travel all right - but without space. This seems to be a rather asinine statement. Nevertheless, we shall see later on that it expresses, in a some-what cryptic fashion, the very secret of a possible space-travel technique.
We learned in Part 2 of "Achilles and the Tortoise" that neither Space nor Time are absolute data of our scientific experience, and that they exist only in an interdependent rela-tion with Matter. But so far we have not yet discussed Matter. Well, what is Matter? Ancient Greek philosophy had an answer. One of its outstanding representatives (Democritus) said that Matter is the accumulation of tiny indivisible particles of an eternal and indestructible substance. All objects and phenomena of Nature can be explained by quantitative changes in the accumulations and configurations of these particles. This is the early theory of atoms. It has influenced scientific development for more than two thousand years. Recently, how-ever, this theory has been modified, and modified to such an extent that the original idea is hardly recognizable. There are elementary particles, yes, but - there is something else as well. And, if somebody tells you that these particles are no particles at all, you won't be able to contradict him.
At first sight the situation looks rather confusing, but this is only due to the fact that we are momentarily caught in a transition period where we are passing from Democritus' idea of absolute atoms and absolute Matter to the very novel discovery that Matter is as relative as Space, Time, color, motion et cetera. Just the same, in order to find out something about the modern concept of Matter the theory of elementary particles is still a good starting point. The following table enumerates the particles which were known to physics up to the year 1953, and also shows, us some of. their properties:
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