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Show Page 118 Phelps, at least, considered Orson Pratt's doctrinal judgment the standard against which all philosophy should be measured. Brother Parley's epithet reveals the esteem he commanded as an eloquent, piercing, and soaring speaker. The most appropriate of the nicknames was given to Young: "Lion of the Lord" exactly befitted the strength and natural predominance of the President of the Twelve. But Pratt already had the reputation of the intellectual leader, known henceforth to be the foremost elaborator and interpreter of Mormon doctrine. In July Orson was assigned the presidency of the Church in New York, and traveled there with the specific assignment of editing a church periodical, The Messenger, and with the personal goal of renewing and expanding a new almanac for the year 1846. While in the city, he settled into some serious writing, exploring the implications of Joseph Smith's cosmology, taking the initial steps toward a system of physics constructed out of Mormon dogma. The September numbers of the New York Messenger contain some of Orson's earliest and most compelling metaphysical speculations. Under the title "Mormon Philosophy," he deals with space and time, and most interesting of all, with the origin and nature of matter and intellect. Although most of his thinking reflects scientific commonplaces of the day, he argues that Newton's laws of motion are ill-conceived for two reasons: first, Newton does not account in his system for the presence of self-conscious entities in the universe; and, second, Newton cannot offer an adequate explanation for the attractive force between atoms. Orson believes, as did most physicists, that matter consisted of fundamental indivisible particles, "atoms," spherical bodies "perfectly solid, and incapable of being broken or abraded by any concussion or violence, however intense, and therefore their sizes and shapes remain unchangeably the same." At this point, he departs from |
