We are living in an age of new and remarkable discoveries of atomic power, and we may feel that the atom belongs to relatively recent scientific research. The development and grasp of atomic power is a modern achievement, but the theory of atomism is an ancient philosophy, dating back to about 460 B.C. At that distant date philosophers held that atoms made up all things. Through the centuries the atomic theory has advanced from a philosophical attempt to explain the nature of matter to the utilization of that infinitesimal unit called an atom as a source of physical power.
Human inventions and the harnessing of atomic energy are not to be scoffed at, for every constructive development is pushing back the ignorance and limitations of the age. Human thought becomes more liberated through progressive research and invention. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, acknowledged inventions as essential to human progress. Her writings bear witness to this fact in the following references: "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" 95:19-22; "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" 345:25–30. It is a necessity of the times that more perfect skill and ingenuity—the result of higher expressions of intelligence—lead to new discoveries which stimulate human thinking and improve human living. They are, however, but steps toward the ultimate; they are not the ultimate. Not material inventions, but the Science of Christ leads human thought to understand spiritual perfection, the one reality.
Well-educated, intelligent men and women are the physicists who have devoted years to ferreting out the nature of the atom. They tell us that atomic particles underlie and constitute every form of matter, from the smallest inert mass to the highest expression of organic life. They say that the atom is a center of energy, a substance appearing in countless forms, permeating all space. From eons of the past to millenniums of the future, atoms, their particles and combinations, are believed to comprise the universe.
