Energeticist vs Materialist

The idea that the world consists of continuous substance against that of tiny material parts occurred since the dawn of human history. By the end of the 19^th century, the proponents of the substance theory which then became energeticists confronted openly and fiercely with those of atomic theory which also known as materialists.

The ancients believed that the world consisted of the transformation of a single continuous substance which they called water with its various phase transformations such as fire, air and solid (earth). The energeticists held a similar idea that the real underlying component of the universe was energy in its various forms ^a).

Energeticists led by Ostwald turned to [chemical] thermodynamics which successfully described the physical and chemical reactions without recourse to the atomic hypothesis ¹⁾. Ostwald and his colleagues claimed that the molecules and atoms were just illusions.

Dalton and the proponents of the atomic idea held that all matter was made up of an extremely small solid having no internal structure, indivisible, unchangeable and indestructible. This theory has taken more than two millennia to evolve, from the time of the Greek philosopher ^b) Democritus of Abdera in the 5th century BC but has only been proved experimentally in the early 20^th century.

Debates between the proponents of the energetics and the atomic hypothesis were so fierce and rude that was believed to become part of the tragic suicide's cause of Boltzmann, one of the strong proponents of atomic hypothesis. However, following the work of Einstein on Brownian motion which pointed out the existence of atoms, Ostwald and his followers finally accepted that the atomic theory was scientifically well-founded.

Today nobody doubts about the existence of atoms. We do not have any problem with that,  but our main concern is on the question of the degree of existence of atoms or subatomic particles we are talking. In our previous articles it was concluded that at the quantum level there is no such matter which exists persistently. At every brief instance of time matter is created and annihilated perpetually out of and into energy at the pace equal to the speed of light ^c) as implicitly expressed in the Einstein equation E = mc² (Fig.1).

The theory of relativity which holds the equivalence of energy and mass in some extend dethrones the concept of matter as the building block of reality, bringing in a new notion of rest mass as a residual concept. However, the quantum theory launches a coup de grace sinking the materialism and classical mechanism for good as we interpret it in Figure-1.

Matter exists only ephemerally. The persistence of matter is just human illusion. The only substance persisting in time is energy from which all matters are derived. The final score of the debates was 1 to 1/2; the energeticists were right, and the materialistic proponents were only half right. The materialism including Marxism which holds matter as the sole subject of change is wrong both physically and philosophically.

Notes:  

                                                              

a)      The ancient “water” is nothing but the immaterial substance which is called energy in modern time. The ancient water and energy are two different names of the same thing. The ancients acknowledged that energy existed in different phases which ancient called earth (solid), water, air, and fire. In our modern time, we may comprehend these different phases of energy as having higher dimensions in successive order.

b)     The word atom comes from Greek which means indivisible.

c)      It is the underlying reality of the wave and particle duality and its related phenomenon observed in the double-slit experiment.

References:

1.   Herbert, N.: "Quantum Reality," Anchor Books, New York, 1985, p. 10.