chemistry

42:7.6Sta­bil­ity of the atom de­pends on the num­ber of elec­tri­cally in­ac­tive neu­trons in the cen­tral body. Chem­i­cal be­hav­ior is wholly de­pen­dent on the ac­tiv­ity of the freely re­volv­ing elec­trons.

42:4.1Light, heat, elec­tric­ity, mag­netism, chem­ism, en­ergy, and mat­ter are—in ori­gin, na­ture, and des­tiny—one and the same thing, to­gether with other ma­te­rial re­al­i­ties as yet undis­cov­ered on Uran­tia.

42:4.2We do not fully com­pre­hend the al­most end­less changes to which phys­i­cal en­ergy may be sub­ject. In one uni­verse it ap­pears as light, in an­other as light plus heat, in an­other as forms of en­ergy un­known on Uran­tia; in un­told mil­lions of years it may reap­pear as some form of rest­less, surg­ing elec­tri­cal en­ergy or mag­netic power; and still later on it may again ap­pear in a sub­se­quent uni­verse as some form of vari­able mat­ter go­ing through a se­ries of meta­mor­phoses, to be fol­lowed by its out­ward phys­i­cal dis­ap­pear­ance in some great cat­a­clysm of the realms. And then, af­ter count­less ages and al­most end­less wan­der­ing through num­ber­less uni­verses, again may this same en­ergy re-emerge and many times change its form and po­ten­tial; and so do these trans­for­ma­tions con­tinue through suc­ces­sive ages and through­out count­less realms. Thus mat­ter sweeps on, un­der­go­ing the trans­mu­ta­tions of time but swing­ing ever true to the cir­cle of eter­nity; even if long pre­vented from re­turn­ing to its source, it is ever re­spon­sive thereto, and it ever pro­ceeds in the path or­dained by the In­fi­nite Per­son­al­ity who sent it forth.

12:9.3Math­e­mat­ics, ma­te­rial sci­ence, is in­dis­pens­able to the in­tel­li­gent dis­cus­sion of the ma­te­rial as­pects of the uni­verse, but such knowl­edge is not nec­es­sar­ily a part of the higher re­al­iza­tion of truth or of the per­sonal ap­pre­ci­a­tion of spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties. Not only in the realms of life but even in the world of phys­i­cal en­ergy, the sum of two or more things is very of­ten some­thing more than, or some­thing dif­fer­ent from, the pre­dictable ad­di­tive con­se­quences of such unions. The en­tire sci­ence of math­e­mat­ics, the whole do­main of phi­los­o­phy, the high­est physics or chem­istry, could not pre­dict or know that the union of two gaseous hy­dro­gen atoms with one gaseous oxy­gen atom would re­sult in a new and qual­i­ta­tively super­ad­di­tive sub­stance—liq­uid wa­ter. The un­der­stand­ing knowl­edge of this one phys­io­chem­i­cal phe­nom­e­non should have pre­vented the de­vel­op­ment of ma­te­ri­al­is­tic phi­los­o­phy and mech­a­nis­tic cos­mol­ogy.

102:7.3Those who would in­vent a re­li­gion with­out God are like those who would gather fruit with­out trees, have chil­dren with­out par­ents. You can­not have ef­fects with­out causes; only the I AM is cause­less. The fact of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence im­plies God, and such a God of per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence must be a per­sonal De­ity. You can­not pray to a chem­i­cal for­mula, sup­pli­cate a math­e­mat­i­cal equa­tion, wor­ship a hy­poth­e­sis, con­fide in a pos­tu­late, com­mune with a pro­cess, serve an ab­strac­tion, or hold lov­ing fel­low­ship with a law.

81:2.9When asked where fire came from, the sim­ple story of An­don and the flint was soon re­placed by the leg­end of how some Prometheus stole it from heaven. The an­cients sought a super­nat­u­ral ex­pla­na­tion for all nat­u­ral phe­nom­ena not within the range of their per­sonal com­pre­hen­sion; and many mod­erns con­tinue to do this. The de­per­son­al­iza­tion of so-called nat­u­ral phe­nom­ena has re­quired ages, and it is not yet com­pleted. But the frank, hon­est, and fear­less search for true causes gave birth to mod­ern sci­ence: It turned as­trol­ogy into as­tron­omy, alchemy into chem­istry, and magic into med­i­cine.

65:6.6But many seem­ingly mys­te­ri­ous ad­just­ments of liv­ing or­gan­isms are purely chem­i­cal, wholly phys­i­cal. At any mo­ment of time, in the blood stream of any hu­man be­ing there ex­ists the pos­si­bil­ity of up­ward of 15,000,000 chem­i­cal re­ac­tions be­tween the hor­mone out­put of a dozen duct­less glands.

65:6.8Physics and chem­istry alone can­not ex­plain how a hu­man be­ing evolved out of the primeval pro­to­plasm of the early seas. The abil­ity to learn, mem­ory and dif­fer­en­tial re­sponse to en­vi­ron­ment, is the en­dow­ment of mind. The laws of physics are not re­spon­sive to train­ing; they are im­mutable and un­chang­ing. The re­ac­tions of chem­istry are not mod­i­fied by ed­u­ca­tion; they are uni­form and de­pend­able. Aside from the pres­ence of the Un­qual­i­fied Ab­so­lute, elec­tri­cal and chem­i­cal re­ac­tions are pre­dictable. But mind can profit from ex­pe­ri­ence, can learn from re­ac­tive habits of be­hav­ior in re­sponse to rep­e­ti­tion of stim­uli.

195:6.11To say that mind “emerged” from mat­ter ex­plains noth­ing. If the uni­verse were merely a mech­a­nism and mind were un­a­part from mat­ter, we would never have two dif­fer­ing in­ter­pre­ta­tions of any ob­served phe­nom­e­non. The con­cepts of truth, beauty, and good­ness are not in­her­ent in ei­ther physics or chem­istry. A ma­chine can­not know, much less know truth, hunger for righ­teous­ness, and cher­ish good­ness.