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Show Page 286 geometry necessary to describe spatial relationships. Key to the Universe or a New Theory of its Mechanism, speaks rarely of Mormon doctrine. It tries to be a purely scientific treatise suggesting a solution to the fundamental problem facing Nineteenth Century physics - explaining the nature of the dynamic forces so recently put to work electrifying the cities of the civilized world. A single Mormon reference faces the title page: "Planetary and Stellar Worlds 'roll upon their wings in their glory, in the midst of the power of God.'" 36 Drawn from Section 88, the "Olive Leaf" of the Doctrine and Covenants, the full citation lyrically describes the motion of the spheres in a paean to God's creative majesty- A golden key decorates the jacket of the second edition, set in a schematic of spheres and lines suggesting the arcane imagery of the Masons. Here, Orson clearly searches for a principle that will adequately account for all interactions of active matter with the passivity of space. Like most physical theorists of his day, he postulated the existence of a substance, "ether," which fills all space and provides a medium for all observable dynamic forces, such as electricity, magnetism, and gravitation. Scientists considered light, for example, to be a disturbance of this "ether," like the waves of a pond rippling around a fallen stone, but they were unable, at the same time, to explain the relationship of "ether" to observable matter. Orson wanted to solve this fundamental question: "The aim of the author...is to vindicate the UNIVERSALITY of the law...A new theory of celestial mechanism is, at first, startling to those who...have unhappily formed an idea, that all the varied phenomena of the universe can be accounted for, by the grand discoveries already made." 37 This notion is erroneous, Orson explains, for the movements of planetary bodies show up many weaknesses in the standard hypotheses of celestial |
