VII. Gravitation and Levitation

VII. Gravitation and Levitation.VII. Gravitation und Levitation.

1. The Riddle of Gravity.1. Das Rätsel der Schwerkraft.

Human language is not the product of scientific reflection, but arose long before all science. It therefore names the changes in nature not as accords with scientific understanding, but as these changes presented themselves to prehistoric man. He always set himself up as the measure of nature, and where, for example, he saw movement, he believed he saw life. Since these two concepts were not kept apart, the reflexive verbs arose. In language movement and life are still undivided today, and when the wind goes through the tree we say: the leaves move themselves. The natural scientist ought properly to protest against this expression; for it names the process we see, but not as we understand it. Science is thus always obliged to speak the language of unscience, that of the prehistoric world view. But how deeply this is still rooted in us betrays itself in a very naive way in our delight in poetry. When the lyric poet gives a soul to inanimate nature, his language delights us, for it takes account of our inborn world view. This is subjectively coloured; and precisely because the poet does not speak scientifically, does not portray the objective process but its impression on man’s sense of sight, the greatest vividness is achieved on the principle of the least expense of force, and is taken up by us. On the pleasant feeling joined with this poetic enjoyment rests.

Palaeontological components are still present in our language in great number, and not only in regard to the sense of feeling but to the other senses too the changes in nature are named subjectively. Through this much confusion is caused in scientific dispute. When we lift a stone from the ground, we have the feeling as if an activity went out from the stone, a striving downward that makes it press on our hand. Naming this feeling, we say: the stone is heavy. With that we believe we have named the nature of the stone. So much are we used to this that lay understanding says quite generally: all bodies are heavy. That again is an expression against which the natural scientist ought to protest; for considered in itself a body is not heavy, but only seems to become so through, and only when, another body is near it that attracts it. But language turns the passive being-attracted into a property of the stone; it moves the cause of weight, which lies outside the stone, into the stone itself. If the earth is given as the attracting body and the stone in the hand of man as the attracted one (for simplicity let the mutual attraction be left aside), the stone seems to be heavy. But that it is mere seeming would reveal itself if we could take the earth away. Only then would the real nature of the stone betray itself, and this would be not to be heavy. If we set the earth beside it again, its natural state is changed: this we call weight. In short, with the word weight the relation of two bodies is named, not the nature of a single one; an effect on the stone is named, not a cause in the stone. The cause of weight lies not in it but outside it, and if this cause is removed, the stone’s weight ceases. In the language of unscience the astronomers say the earth has a weight of 120,000 trillion hundredweight. But if we could remove the sun (and all the fixed stars), the weight of the earth would be nil; if I take away the attracting body, the other is of course no longer attracted, and its weight consists only in being attracted. In short, gravitation is by no means the natural and unchangeable state of bodies.