Gravitational Attraction is a Myth

From Earth Not a Globe Review, January 1895

By “ Zetetes”

The attraction of gravitation a myth ? Y e s ! a fabulous story, with

no foundation in fact, though having an APPARENT support in some

terrestrial phenomena. Many people imagine that gravitation is a word

representing some discovered fact or force in Nature ; but let them

proceed to show us what fact or force, and they will discover their

mistake. Gravitation was an invention, not a discovery; and a supposition

necessitated by another hypothesis, viz .; the globular theory. One

was invented to support the other. Without gravitation the globular

theory falls ; and without the globular theory what would become of

gravitation ? I t would become less and lighter than our little molecule

of hydrogen, and fly away into unknown and uncivilized regions.

“ Parallax” proved the globular theory false, by the F A C T that the

surface of water is horizontal; and “ Zetetes,” the investigator after

Truth, practically proves, that the theory of gravitation is utterly false,

by a little molecule of hydrogen gas ! No one can even tell us what

gravitation is, or how it acts. Now, although we may not know what

electricity is, or magnetism ; we do know how they act. As I showed

in No. 2 Earth Review, Newton did not know how gravitation acts, or

whether it really be attraction, or repulsion ; that is, he did not know

whether there is such a thing as attraction or not. Where Newton

failed to guess, what other mathematician dare try ? I f the inventor did

not know, who amongst his pupils can tell ? But they should first prove

that gravitation does act before they attempt to explain how it acts.

The magnet is no proof of gravitation. Its power is selective and

limited. It seems to attract steel and soft iron, but it will not draw

stones and wood ! Gravitation is supposed to attract all bodies, even

the stars. They are all supposed to be pulling hard at one another, yet

they never get any nearer together. It is strange ! But does the magnet

really attract steel ? The iron or steel goes towards the magnet, but is

its motion caused by the attraction or the repulsion of some force ? It

may be carried by a magnetic current, not drawn by the magnet itself.

Newton confessed that the idea of bodies acting “ upon one another at

a distance,” and “ without the mediation o f anything else by and through

which their action and force may be conveyed from one to the other,”

is “ so great an absurdity, that,” says he, “ I believe no man, who has in

philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking, can ever fall into

it.” Yet many do fall into this error. They are not Zetetics. I stand

on a bridge and I watch a log of wood coming down the stream towards

the bridge. Is the bridge attracting the log from a distance ? Yes, as

much as ever the magnet attracts the soft iron ! I f there were a weir by

the bridge, the log would remain by it, as the iron remains attached to

the magnet. I f not, and if the arch under the bridge be sufficiently

wide, the log would pass under and follow the stream. Then the bridge

would seem to be repelling the log, like one “ pole ” of the magnet will

repel the magnetic needle. Ye t by such flimsy arguments and pre

texts is the theory of attraction supported. No man in the world can

define gravitation, nor tell how it acts ; it is a tissue of philosophical

speculations and falsehoods, unworthy of honest men and thinker’s,

perhaps the most ingenious theory of gravitation ever proposed is that

of Le Sage. He “ imagines,” says Mr, J. E. Gore,

“ An infinite number of ultra mundane corpuscles of excessive minuteness, speeding

through space in all directions, and with enormous velocities. Two bodies in this

ocean of flying corpuscles screen each other from the molecular bombardment, and

would consequently move together with a force varying inversely as the square of the

distance.”

Upon which Professor Tait remarks:

“ It is necessary also to suppose that the particles and masses of matter have a cagelike

form, so that enormously more corpuscles pass through them than impinge upon

them ; else the gravitation action between two bodies would not be as the product of

their masses.”

Well might Sir John Herschel say:

“ The hypothesis of Le Sage, which assumes that every point of space is penetrated

at every instant of time by material particles sui gene7-is, moving in right lines in

every possible direction, and impinging upon the material atoms of bodies, as a

mode of accounting for gravitation, is too grotesque to need serious consideration! ”

“ Too grotesque to need serious consideration!” One of the

theories of gravitation “grotesque!” And a clever astronomer says so,

not an humble zetetic! An humble zetetic agrees with him though.

What then must the poorer theories be ? Readers, take your choice

between common sense and reason, theories “too grotesque to need serious

consideration.”