The “primeval atom” and the Fabric of Spacetime

While this essay is ostensibly about Isaac Newton, it becomes difficult to say much about Newton and his imagination without discussing him along with perhaps the greatest imagination of the twentith century, Albert Einstein’s. Einstein’s imagination leaped from Newton’s three laws of motion:

- The First Law — “A body at rest will remain at rest, and a body in motion will remain in motion unless it is acted upon by an external force.”

- The Second Law — “The force acting on an object is equal to the mass of that object times its acceleration.”

- The Third Law — “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

to the discovery of the “spacetime” model of the universe which exists in 4 dimensions that we can perceive.

- 3 are spacial (up/down, left/right, forward/back) and

- the 4th is time.

The 4 dimensions are commonly referred to as one … spacetime.

According to William Blake’s biographer, Leo Damrosch, Blake believed we live in the midst of Eternity, right here and now, and if we could open our consciousness to the fullness of being, it would be like “experiencing a sunrise that never ends”.