MICHAEL PUPIN 193 



uct of a creative co-ordination. The radiation of the 

 setting sun, reflected, refracted, and scattered by mat- 

 ter floating in the atmosphere, is the external source 

 of this beauty. It is an energy chaos, a practically in- 

 finite number and variety of electrical pulses sent out 

 at random by the busy solar electrons. These chaotic 

 signals are recorded by our sensations and appear in 

 our consciousness as the beauty of the sunset, a cosmos 

 of consciousness, a creation called into existence by 

 the chaotic energy supply of the external world. This 

 is creative co-ordination which connects the external 

 physical world to the world of our consciousness. 



The perfume of the rose, the comforting glow of 

 the log in our fireplace, the ambrosial sweetness of 

 the honey — are all orderly realities of pleasure and 

 joy in the world of our consciousness. But all of them 

 can be traced to the chaotic stimuli of the external 

 world. These few examples suffice to show that 

 chaotic signals convey messages to the living body 

 from its environment, but that each deciphered mes- 

 sage appears as an intelligible cosmos in the world 

 of consciousness. There is somewhere in the path of 

 these messages a creative co-ordination which trans- 

 forms their chaos into an intelligible cosmos of our 

 consciousness. 



A part of the co-ordinating transformation Is ob- 

 viously in the physical structure of our body which, 

 like the piston of a steam-engine, averages up the 

 chaotic pulses conveyed through a most complex net- 

 work of nerves from the external world to the central 

 station, the brain. But the resulting cosmos in the 

 world of consciousness is not that of orderly physical 

 functions like those in the external inorganic and or- 



