Abstract
THIS unusual book opens with a quotation from Lenin—"Modern physics is in a state of confinement ; it is giving birth to dialectic materialism". The author is a medical man whose previous book, “The Outlook of Science", was first published in 1933 and reached a second edition in 1946. The greater part of the present book is a history of the evolution of ideas concerning matter and energy. It is emphasized that Newtonian ideas, in which mass or inertia was the characteristic property of what is usually called matter, must now, in. the light of Einstein's work, be modified so that what is usually called energy must also be attributed with mass. Every physicist will agree with this, and will be interested in the quotations from Newton, Maxwell, Einstein, and others. Dr. R. L. Worrall's distinctive contribution is to insist that the term matter should now be extended to include what is usually called energy. When a distinction is needed, we can speak of the corporeal and incorporeal state (p. 62).
Energy and Matter
By R. L. Worrall. Pp. 144. (London: Staples Press, Ltd., 1948.) 10s. 6d. net.
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PIAGGIO, H. Energy and Matter. Nature 164, 635 (1949). https://doi.org/10.1038/164635a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/164635a0