or energetic philosophy of Ostwald, which confessedly derives[1] from the thermodynamic argument of Gibbs, but should not be confused with the latter. Gibbs was concerned only with applying the laws of mechanics to physical chemistry. Compared with the case of nature, he says, thermodynamic systems are "of an ideal simplicity." To Ostwald, however, mind and matter are but forms of energy, which is the only thing eternal and immortal. "We can deal with measurable things, never with the unknown heart of nature," says Ostwald, yet his basic principle, energy, is to all intents and purposes identical with the eternal infinite substance of Spinoza, Goethe and Haeckel, "sive Deus, sive Natura naturans, sive Anima mundi appelletur." Matter, in Ostwald's scheme, is a group of energies in space; thought becomes a mode of energy involving evolution of heat, and "the problem of the connection between body and spirit belongs to the same series as the connection between chemical and electrical energy, which is treated in the theoiy of voltaic chains."[2] Falling in love, listening to a Beethoven symphony, identifying oneself with nature, are to Ostwald instances of dissipation of energy like any other.[3] Philosophy of this kind does not clear up the mystery of the relation of mind and matter. Descartes assumed that mind and matter exist apart as parallels, having no causal connection with each other. Spinoza held that neither can exist apart; indeed, he sometimes asserts their practical identity as different modes of the same eternal substance. But however intimately they may be associated, no scientist or philosopher has yet proven, whether.in the body of man or in the origin of the universe, that one is either the cause or the effect of the other.
Assuming matter in mass to be ultimately made up of rotational, vortical or gyrostatic stresses or of energies, whether kinetic or potential, we encounter the formidable objection of Boltzmann, that it seems illogical, not to say unmechanical, to postulate motion as the primary idea with the moving thing as the derived one. Motion of what? we have a right to ask, since Ostwald disdains the ether of the physicists.[4] Matter, in the words of Sir Oliver Lodge, may be physically resolved
- ↑ "Wir wollen daher den Versuch wagen, eine Weltansicht ohne die Benutzung des Begriffs der Materie ausschliesslich aus energetischem Material aufzubauen. . . In der für die neuere Chemie grundlegenden Abhandlung von. Willard Gibbs ist sogar dies Postulat praktisch in weitestem Umfange durchgeführt worden, allerdings ohne dass es ausdrücklich aufgestellt worden wäre." W. Ostwald, "Vorles. über Naturphilosophie," 165.
- ↑ Monist, 1907.
- ↑ W. Ostwald, "Individuality and Immortality," 44-46.
- ↑ "What the atom of each element is, whether it is a movement or a thing, or a vortex, or a point having inertia, all these questions are surrounded by profound darkness. I dare not use any less pedantic word than entity to designate the ether, for it would be an exaggeration of our knowledge to speak of it as a body, or even a substance," Lord Salisbury, "Rep. Brit. Ass. Adv. Sc," 1894, 8.
