113. On the Nature of Some Basic Scientific Concepts

I.) Atoms are to be regarded as ideal spatial volumes; the content is the result of the encounter of force directions – e.g. force directions a b c act in space, their encounter causes a force resultant, which acts as an atom of tetrahedral character.

Elements are the expression of definite force encounters; that they reveal themselves as such is due to the fact that one force, in its encounter with another, produces an effect; while other force effects are ineffective against each other.

Crystals are the results of more complicated force encounters; atoms those of simpler ones.

Amorphous masses result from the neutralization of the directions of force.

II.) Force is the one-sided, spatial manifestation of the spirit. It cannot be said that force acts on matter, since matter consists only in the arrangement of the effects of encountering force rays. One form of energy never passes over into another; any more than the actions of one person pass over into those of another. What is transferred is only the arithmetic expression of measurement. “Mechanical energy is transferred into heat energy.” The real process is as follows: a certain quantum of mechanical energy is able to stimulate a certain quantum of this manifestation in a spiritual being that reveals itself as heat. (This still occurs in a healthy way in J. R. Mayer. It was only Helmholtz who confused the matter.)

III.) Neither sound nor warmth nor light nor electricity are vibrations, just as a horse is not a sum of gallops. Sound, for example, is an essential quale and the effect of this essential quale as it passes through the air is: vibration. For the sensitive human being, the vibration is the cause for the torment to be imitated in himself; therein consists the perception of the tone. It is similar with the others: air, etc.

IV.) Light is that which is perceived as such (see my introduction to Goethe's Theory of Colors); the vibration is the manifestation of light in the ether.

The refraction of light is based on the effect of certain force direction on the light direction. Newton's color rings and interference phenomena are the result of light radiation (the effect of light in the ether) and other force effects (weakening, gradually weakening) in the path of the light. The same applies to polarization phenomena. One should not look for the polarization figures in the structure of the light quale, but in the structure of the medium that stands in the way of the light.

The speed of propagation is the result of a kind of friction of the light at the medium.

V.) Light is not to be considered a function of electricity, but the latter as a kind of physical carrier of light.

Electrically charged matter: certain accumulations of force hold those accumulations of force that manifest themselves as electricity.

VI.) Mathematics is the abstracted sum of the forces acting in space. When one says that mathematical propositions hold a priori, it is based on the fact that man is in the same lines of force as the other beings and that he can abstract from everything else that is not a spatial, etc. schema.