The Science Fiction of Edgar Allan Poe by Edgar Allan Poe

Author:Edgar Allan Poe
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141922065
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2009-11-06T16:00:00+00:00

at C – they will be so much farther diffused as to occupy four such surfaces : – at treble the distance, or at D, they will be so much farther separated as to occupy nine such surface : – while, at quadruple the distance, or at E, they will have become so scattered as to spread themselves over sixteen such surfaces – and so on forever.

In saying, generally, that the radiation proceeds in direct proportion with the squares of the distances, we use the term radiation to express the degree of the diffusion as we proceed outwardly from the centre. Conversing the idea, and employing the word ‘concentralization’ to express the degree of the drawing together as we come back toward the centre from an outward position, we may say that concentralization proceeds inversely as the squares of the distances. In other words, we have reached the conclusion that, on the hypothesis that matter was originally radiated from a centre and is now returning to it, the concentralization, in the return, proceeds exactly as we know the force of gravitation to proceed.

Now here, if we could be permitted to assume that concentralization exactly represents the force of the tendency to the centre – that the one is exactly proportional with the other, and that the two proceed together – we should have shown all that is required. The sole difficulty existing, then, is to establish a direct proportion between ‘concentralization’ and the force of concentralization; and this is done, of course, if we establish such proportion between ‘radiation’ and the force of radiation.

A very slight inspection of the Heavens assures us that the stars have a certain general uniformity, equability, or equidistance, of distribution through that region of space in which, collectively, and in a roughly globular form, they are situated : – this species of very general, rather than absolute, equability, being in full keeping with my deduction of inequidistance, within certain limits, among the originally diffused atoms, as a corollary from the design of infinite complexity of relation out of irrelation. I started, it will be remembered, with the idea of a generally uniform but particularly ununiform distribution of the atoms; – an idea, I repeat, which an inspection of the stars, as they exist, confirms.

But even in the merely general equability of distribution, as regards the atoms, there appears a difficulty which, no doubt, has already suggested itself to those among my readers who have borne in mind that I suppose this equability of distribution effected through radiation from a centre. The very first glance at the idea, radiation, forces us to the entertainment of the hitherto unseparated and seemingly inseparable idea of agglomeration about a centre, with dispersion as we recede from it – the idea, in a word, of inequability of distribution in respect to the matter radiated.

Now, I have elsewhere* observed26 that it is by just such difficulties as the one now in question – such peculiarities – such roughness – such protuberances

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.