17.004 Arthur Young’s ideas

Colin Wilson
Mysteries - An investigation into the occult, the paranormal and the supernatural, 1994
Page 608+609 Arthur Young’s ideas

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One of the most remarkable and constructive attempts to ‘rebuild science’ in our time is to be found in the work of Arthur Young the author of The Reflexive Universe and The Geometry of Meaning. As early as 1927, Young, who later achieved fame as the inventor of the Bell helicopter, recognised that the problem is that logic, by its very nature, can make no allowance for freedom.

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The seventh, he eventually concluded, is that of light, which is capable of creating particles. Light is the first step in the great process. And the evolution of matter – from light to molecules may be conceived as a kind of ‘fall’. Light loses its freedom in creating sub-atomic particles; free electrons lose their freedom in condensing into atoms; atoms lose freedom by forming molecules.

But beyond these first four stages of the ‘fall’, a new ascent begins. Plants represent a new struggle for freedom, and animals a still higher level. The final level is still to come; this is the struggle we are still engaged in.

Like Charlotte Bach, Young believes that all evolution is purposive. He points out that light, in entering the earth’s atmosphere, follows the path that will get it to its destination in the least time; Max Planck observed that in this respect, light behaves like an intelligent being. This tendency of energy to choose the path that will take the least time, Planck called ‘action’; and he made the famous discovery that ‘action’ comes in discrete packets, which he called quanta. Young points out that ‘wholeness’ is also true of human action; we cannot perform any act one and a half times; if you jump out of a window, you either do it or you don’t.

Readers without training in quantum physics may find all this bewildering; but Young’s conclusion is clarity itself. ‘The older concept of a universe made up of physical particles interacting according to fixed laws is no longer tenable. It is implicit in present findings that action rather than matter is basic, action being understood as something essentially undefinable and non-objective, analogous, I would add, to human decision.’ And he takes the bull by the horns when he asserts that inventing the Bell helicopter taught him that evolution is essentially a purposive process.

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