Text: Nothing But Motion Chapter Three DEWEY B. LARSON Volume I of a revised and enlarged edition of THE STRUCTURE OF THE PHYSICAL UNIVERSE http://www.reciprocalsystem.com/nbm/index.htm Cosmologists often begin their analyses of large-scale physical processes with a consideration of a hypothetical ³empty² universe, one in which no matter exists in the postulated space-time setting. But an empty universe of motion is an impossibility. Without motion there would be no universe. The most primitive condition, the situation which prevails when the universe of motion exists, but nothing at all is happening in that universe, is a condition in which units of motion exist independently, with no interaction. In this condition all speed is unity, one unit of space per unit of time, and since all units of motion are alike­they have no property but speed, and that is unity for all­the entire universe is a featureless uniformity. In order that there may be physical phenomena that can be observed or measured there must be some deviation from this one-to-one relation, and since it is the deviation that is observable, the amount of the deviation is a measure of the magnitude of the phenomenon. Thus all physical activity, all change that occurs in the system of motions that constitutes the universe, extends from unity, not from zero.

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