Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
nowhere else but in matter itself. Thus the great archetypes of Gaia and anima mundi
that figure so importantly in the human soul could well be prefigured in some mysterious
way not in some abstract realm far from this world, but in the very molecules and atoms
that constitute our palpable, sensing bodies. Perhaps psyche becomes visible when the
relationships amongst a community of interacting agents are powerful and complex
enough to call it forth from within the very matrix of materiality. If it is true that psyche
is indeed revealed in the very thick of relationship, then Gaia may well be a domain in
which the presence of living beings so quickens and intensifies the planet-wide interac-
tions amongst atoms, rocks, atmosphere and water that the Earth literally awakens and
begins to experience herself as alive and sentient.
Thus, panpsychism and the new animism teach us that chemistry need no longer be
thought of in merely mechanical ways, as if 'chemicals' are nothing more than dead,
static cogs. Chemical properties are sublimely fluid—they are the ways in which differ-
ent aspects of the inner natures of the elements reveal themselves in different contexts
and circumstances, just as our own behaviour is dependent to some extent on the social
setting in which we find ourselves. But we must be careful when speaking of 'atoms'.
The danger, alluded to above, is that we begin to think of them as things that exist in
isolation from everything else, even whilst they interact with each other.
There are many different kinds of atoms, each with different chemical personalities.
These are called the elements, because they were once thought to be the building blocks
of everything around us, including our own bodies, and of course, the Earth. In the
last century it was discovered that atoms are in fact not fundamental after all, but are
themselves divisible into three 'particles'—the electron, the proton and the neutron. The
physicist Neils Bohr was responsible for providing us with a now outdated but neverthe-
less useful model of how these particles are arranged within atoms and how they interact
with each other. Atoms, he said, are like miniature solar systems. In the centre, in the
place of the sun, is the nucleus, which is composed of positively charged protons and
charge-less neutrons. Around the nucleus are the negatively charged electrons, orbiting
around it as planets do around the sun. Protons and neutrons are heavy, and constitu-
te most of the mass of an atom, whilst electrons are almost without mass at all, but all
atoms are 99.99% empty space. All the particles wink in and out of existence accord-
ing to some quantum physicists, entering what cosmologist Brian Swimme calls the 'All
Nourishing Abyss'—the quantum vacuum or zero point energy field, when they briefly
pass out of existence.
Despite their immense difference in mass, an electron's negative charge exactly can-
cels out the positive charge on a proton. Bohr pointed out one further astonishing
fact—that the numbers of protons and electrons in pure elemental atoms are always
equal, so that the overall charge in such atoms is zero. Science seems to gloss over an
Search WWH ::




Custom Search