Paul Laffoley
(b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts)

The Solitron
1997
Oil, Acrylic, Ink, Lettering on Canvas
73 1/2 x 73 1/2 in.

Subject: A Design for a Perpetual Motion Device

Symbol Evocation: The Natural Abundance of the Universe

Comments: The Solitron is a design for producing perpetual motion. As an object itself (a painting), the Solitron is in the tradition of American abstract painting, especially similar to the visual structure of the later work of the Adolph Gottlieb. That is, it is a "solid surface" of flat color that avoids both schematic two-dimensionality and the full three-dimensional spatiality that a free manual touch engenders. Also the design is psychotronic (a mass-consciousness interactive) device, which can be efficacious in a two-dimensional or a three-dimensional modality. The Solitron makes use of the natural motion properties of the correctly generated solitron wave (which retains its velocity and form during energy encounters) in conjunction with the mass-consciousness unifying capacity of lucid dreaming.

I

The basic definition of perpetual motion is an objective process that does more work than the amount of energy you put into it; the output is greater that the input. Perpetual motion occurs in three classes: (in order of difficulty)

1) The creation of energy
2) The reversal of entropy
3) The elimination of friction

In essence perpetual motion (although it is a lot older as a concept) attacks the Nineteenth Century vision of science that is implicit in the writings of Sadi-Nicolas-Leonard Carnot (1796-1832), a French military engineer. His book Reflexions sur La Puissance Motrice du Feu (Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire), published in 1824, when he was 28, is a meditation on the work of the Scottish engineer James Watt (1736-1819) who in 1865 produced the first efficient steam engine. The now famous Carnot Cycle of the ideal heat engine (with its four isothermal, adiabatic, expanse-compression stages) set the cultural stage for the current image of science (that of conservative skepticism) expressed by the framing of the Three Laws of Thermodynamics:

First Law: Energy can change from form to form, but cannot be created.
Second Law: Entropy always increases.
Third Law: Every use of energy results in some loss due to friction.

The acceptance of these laws was so pervasive in the Nineteenth Century (regardless of the rise of science fiction in 1848 with the publication of Eureka: A Prose Poem by Edgar Allan Poe), that by 1896 the United States Patent Office made a ruling that it would no longer accept applications for perpetual motion machines unless accompanied by a working model. The officials at the patent office believed that all the perpetual motion concepts could not be "useful" or could not operate because of the intention of the inventors, which for the goal of perpetual motion have always been the attempt to:

1) create energy
2) find a free source of energy
3) eliminate friction so there is no waste of energy
4) eliminate the wearing out of parts of the infrastructure of potential perpetual motion machines
This is the current state of the clash of beliefs concerning the existence of perpetual motion.

II

But the initial attack on the concept of perpetual motion was launched by the High Gothic artist-scientist, Leonardo DaVinci (1452-1519) who wished to turn his back, like the painter Masaccio (1401-1428), on anything that even hinted at the medieval and look forward to a particular future, which became, for them, the Italian Renaissance.