The astronomers of Cambridge, successors of the American experimenter George Ellery Hale and of Eddington and Jeans, are not the final word in cosmology. There will be a final word. The picture created from background material to gas, from gas to galaxies, and from galaxies to solar systems ends for us in our planet with a white hot liquid core. Nuclear reactions created this from the superheat of an exploding supernova. Our erupting volcanoes are the end product. We can sit beside erupting lava fountains and watch hydrogen flames, the same gas that was made of the background material in the universe.
All this is outcome of gravitation. It extends from the first eddies of hydrogen in outer space to the final rotation of the earth. The final hydrogen, with carbon, made life on the earth. The five elements of volcanic gas are identical with the five elements of organic chemistry. Dr. Hoyle mistakenly concludes that we have no clue to our own fate. But he points out that the universe is continuous creation. Our picture is one instant of time in an everlasting now. Mind is an everlasting unit beyond which we cannot go.
It is illogical to pay any attention to existence after death unless we pay equal attention to existence before birth. All is continuous creation. The making of hydrogen is just as true within the creation of life as within the universe. Life is under gravitation. Gravitation controls the instantaneous moving picture, even the emergence of life from volcanic gases under enormous water pressure at sea bottom. It is just as much subject to experiment as the outer boundary of the universe.
Life is an end product; and it thinks, worships, and experiments. Treating life and volcanoes as end products of Hoyle’s universe makes science fundamentally cosmology.
One final comment, after looking at sea bottom eruptions through all the ages. Continental life came out of the sea, and original life comes continually from the earth core. This gives new dignity to the future search for global action on the sea bottom.
The “emergent evolution” of Lloyd Morgan makes much of mutation as accounting for progress from unconscious life to consciousness, consciousness to memory, memory to reasoning, and reasoning to spirituality. Each one of these is a new mutation, in the same sense as a new fruit by Burbank. The first unconscious life may be considered a mutation from the inorganic of the globe. The totally unknown pressure-temperature conditions of volcanic eruption through the cracking earth of ocean bottom, and the ground waters under the ocean, lend a final dignity to exploration of that frontier.
Hoyle writes that the ultimate goal of the New Cosmology is continuous creation in outer space. The ultimate goal of the New Volcanology is continuous creation in oceanic depths.
INDEX
A
- aa, [54], [67], [78], [104], [121], [124], [125], [129], [148], [174]
- Abbot, [159]
- Absaroka Range, [8]
- Adak Harbor, [141]
- Adams, C. E., [110]
- Africa, [181], [182]
- Agassiz, Alexander, [20], [25], [55], [65], [72], [164]
- Agassiz Museum, [17], [19]
- Aghileen Pinnacles, [140]
- Agricultural Experiment Station, Kodiak, [138]
- Agua cone, [81]
- Akutan Island, [154]
- Alaska, [30–31], [55], [72–75], [81], [82], [84], [110], [114], [117], [127], [137–145], [154], [169], [172], [173], [183]
- — expeditions to, [55], [72–75], [84], [138]
- Alaska Commercial Company, [141]
- Albatross (ship), [170]
- Aleutian arc, [82]
- Aleutian eruptions, [169]
- Aleutian Geographical Observatory, [142]
- Aleutian Islands, [55], [75], [84], [110], [114], [127], [137–145], [154], [172], [173]
- — expeditions to, [55], [72–75], [84], [138]
- Aleutian trench, [31]
- Alfaro, Anastasio, [79]
- Algonkian, [28]
- Allen, E. H., [12], [112], [115], [129]
- Alps, the, [103], [116]
- Alyea, Hubert, [5]
- Amazon River, [82]
- Amchitka Island, [141]
- Amerada Company, [112]
- American Journal of Science, [113]
- American Museum, [56]
- American Relief Committee, [63]
- amphibian vehicles, [74], [138], [142–143], [168]
- Anderson, C. A., [137]
- Anderson, J., [111]
- Anderson, Tempest, [xii], [65], [71], [76], [84]
- Anderson, the cook, [8]
- Andes, the, [78], [82], [116], [181]
- Andrews, E. C., [112]
- Angaha, [147–149]
- Antigua, [157]
- Appalachian basin, [50], [52]
- Appalachian Mountains, [18], [46–49], [51–52], [116]
- Archean granites, [8]
- Arizona, [25–28]
- arrowroot, [160]
- Asama Volcano, [78], [107–108]
- Asama-Bandai system, [108]
- Ascutney Mountain, [7], [40], [53]
- Asia, mountain ranges of, [117]
- Aso Volcano, [108]
- astronomy, [6], [30], [147–150], [172–173], [184–185]
- Atka, [72], [75]
- Atlantic Ocean, [53], [170]
- — deeps of, [53]
- Attu, [140–141]
- Auckland, [109–110]
- Audubon, J. J., [3], [4]
- Australia, [132], [163]
- — science congress in, [132]