Chapter Three * 



Matter 



/'^NE of the most striking changes that modern 

 ^-^ research has wrought, concerns man*s concepts 

 about matter. 



In its magnitude and its far-reaching significance, 

 this change ranks with the major revolutions of 

 modern thought. First in these great revolutions of 

 modern thought came the change from the Ptolemaic, 

 geocentric, astronomy to the Copernican, heliocentric 

 view. (With the years, the solar system itself, so 

 far as man's ideas of its size and importance in the 

 galaxy of universes is concerned, has shrunk into 

 utter insignificance.) Next geology gave the Western 

 mind an entirely new concept of duration — the un- 

 impeachable record is not of a few thousand years 

 but of millions of years, many millions of years. 

 Next came the sweep of the broad concepts of evolu- 

 tion, the concept of a dynamic and orderly process 

 of development. 



And now, most recently, there has taken place 

 the great revolution of thought concerning the con- 



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