But the flame and the
explosion appeared only as an incidental phenomenon without
significance, as it represents and contains no part of the matter, but
equation (1) gives the complete balance of matter in transformation. It
was much later that the scientists realized the significance of the
flame accompanying the material transformation as not a mere incidental
phenomenon, but as the manifestation of the entity energy, permanent and
indestructible, like matter, and the complete equation (2) appeared,
giving the balance of energy as well as the balance of matter--that is,
coincident with the transformation of matter is a transformation of
energy, and both are indissoluble from each other, either involves the
other, and both may be called different aspects of the same phenomenon.
But we have seen, when mental activity occurs in our mind, chemical and
physical transformations accompany it, are coincident with it, and
apparently indissoluble from it. Does there possibly exist the same
relation between mental activity and the transformations of energy and
matter, as we have seen to exist between the latter two? Are mental
activity, energy transformation, and transformation of matter three
aspects of the same biochemical phenomenon?
If for nearly a hundred years equation (1) was considered complete,
until we found that one side was incomplete, and arrived at the more
complete equation (2), the question may well be raised: Is equation (2)
complete, dealing as it does with two entities, matter and energy, or is
it not possibly still incomplete, and a third entity should appear in
the equation, an entity "X," as I may call it, differing from energy and
from matter, just as energy and matter differ from each other, and
therefore not recognizable and measurable by the means which measure
energy or matter, just as energy cannot be measured by the same means as
matter?
That is, the complete equation of transformation would read:
(3) 2H_{2} + O_{2} = 2H_{2}O + 293,000 J.
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