Matter and Energy

The theory of relativity represents fields of force as structural properties of space-time, and a field of force is the arena in which the presence of energy is detectable. Energy manifests itself in the physical world as radiation, and Einstein established its fundamental identity with mass. ¹ This has since been demonstrated experimentally by the annihilation of elementary particles and their conversion into γ-rays and the reverse process of conversion of γ-rays into pairs of electrons and positrons (’pair production’) as observed by Blackett and Occhialini. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that both matter and energy should appear to us in the same phenomenal forms, as particles and as waves. The universal interconnectedness of things is here again exemplified. Space-time structure, in the form of curvature of differing degrees, appears as field, and field, by what Teilhard would call ‘complexification’, organizes itself into material particles. The contem-porary theory of matter, notwithstandin-g disputes and controversies still current about the concepts involved, unquestionably represents the atom as a com-plicated organization of fields of force describable without misrepresentation as an energy complex. This being so, an unbroken continuity between space-time, field, energy and matter is established, as a series of forms or manifestations of the real, each a more complex elaboration of its predecessor in the series. The progression is effected, to borrow again from Teilhard, by a process of self-enfoldment (enroulement sur soi-même) of the prior form: curvature of space gives field, the structure or complexity of the field (as we are about to find) takes the form of waves (or radiation), further complication of these, by superposition, produces wave-packets or particles, and the intricate organization of particles into a single energy system constitutes the atom.