Physics¶
Core Argument¶
In the dialectical development of physics, the mechanical conception of motion finds its necessary sublation through the categories of heat, electricity, and chemical change. The naïve view of heat as motion, held by Bacon, Boyle, and Newton, was more correct than the metaphysical caloric theory that arose in eighteenth-century France. The conservation of energy’s quantitative constancy was stated by Descartes; the new discovery of 1842 was the transformation of motion’s form. In reality, impact always transforms some mechanical motion into heat; friction is a continuous form of impact doing this, known since primeval times. Kinetic energy consumption always has a twofold result: production of potential energy and conversion of the remainder into heat via friction and other resistances.
Hegel’s conception of force and manifestation as identical is proved mathematically in the change of matter’s form; force is measured by its manifestation. The category of force has value only through motion’s measurability; it is usable in mechanics but reaches its limit when considering various forms of motion simultaneously. No regular physicist now calls electricity, magnetism, or heat mere forces. Conceiving heat as a form of motion sublates the category of force. In organic nature, the category is completely inadequate; “vital force” has been the last refuge of supernaturalists. The notion of force arises automatically from our own body’s muscle power, which appears to produce rather than transfer motion.
The question of heat radiated into space remains unsolved; the theory of motion’s transformation poses it categorically. Clausius’s second law, showing energy as qualitatively lost, implies the universe was created, making motion creatable and destructible—an absurdity. Repulsion is the really active aspect of motion, attraction the passive. States of aggregation are nodal points where quantitative change becomes qualitative. At absolute zero, no gas is possible; a permanent gas is impossible. The kinetic theory abolishes the difference between molecular and mass motion. The opposition between light and darkness disappears; there exist dark light-rays.
Faraday established that voltaic electricity results from chemical processes, that the quantity of electricity is measured by electrolytic product, and that every atom is surrounded by the same quantity of electricity, making heat and electricity resemble each other. Static electricity is the tension of pre-existing neutral electricity, discharged instantaneously by a spark. Dynamic electricity is produced continuously by converting chemical motion into electricity, yielding a current that can be reconverted into chemical motion via electrolysis. This current cannot be directly converted into static electricity, but Ruhmkorff’s machine condenses it into a higher form combining current and tension. A dialectical example: repulsion of like magnetic poles is explained by attraction of like electric currents. At the boundary of molecular and atomic science, both physics and chemistry declare themselves incompetent, yet the greatest results are expected there. Friction and impact produce temporary molecular motions; at a certain stage these become permanent chemical change.