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07248_Field_TCUM T813.txt
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1996-04-10
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942b
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16 lines
Most scientists are quite aware that since we have
acquired some knowledge of electricity it is not possible to
speak of atoms as pieces of matter. Again, as more is known
about electrical “discharges” and energy, there is less and less
tendency to speak of electricity as a thing that “flows” like
water through a wire, or is “contained” in a battery. Rather, the
tendency is to speak of electricity as painters speak of space;
namely, that it is a variable condition that involves the special
positions of two or more bodies.
There is no longer any tendency to speak of electricity as
“contained” in anything. Painters have long known that objects
are not contained in space, but that they generate their own
spaces. It was the dawning awareness of this in the
mathematical world a century ago that enabled Lewis Carroll,
the Oxford mathematician, to contrive Alice in Wonderland , in