[NoraSpinnor]

Dewey B. Larson (1898–1990), an American engineer and independent theoretician, looked at space differently than most people. While the world of physics debated particles, waves, and vacuums, Larson saw ratios.

Larson treated motion as the primitive ingredient, not matter-in-space. In the preface to Nothing But Motion, he states that “…space and time are simply the two reciprocal aspects of motion, and have no other significance.”

Instead of treating “matter” as primary and then trying to explain how it behaves inside a ready-made space and time, Larson flips it: assume motion is the only basic constituent, then work out what space and time must be in terms of that motion. From that standpoint, space and time aren’t independent entities; they are the two complementary terms that compose motion.

Larson points out that the usual “equation of motion” doesn’t just define speed in terms of distance-over-time; it also (quietly) defines what space and time are in the only context where they actually appear in physics: as the numerator and denominator of motion. No motion, no fraction—so, no numerator or denominator either.

In this view, matter is organized motion. Larson explicitly rejects the assumption that atomic theory must always be a theory of parts inside parts inside parts, arguing that much of the absurdity in subatomic modeling comes from this partitional approach. He saw an atom as a three-dimensional combination of motions. “Mass” is the measure of resistance to changes in motion (inertia) produced by the particle’s own inherent motion. In a universe where nothing exists but motion, the only thing that can resist a change of motion is motion. The particular motion that resists changes is the inherent motion that makes an atom an atom.

Though Larson is approaching this from a mathematical stance, his depiction of space, time, and matter is surprisingly close to Walter Russell’s. For Russell, stillness is the first principle—the silent ground that gives rise to every visible change. He frames motion as an appearance generated by wave activity, a kind of projected drama over a deeper equilibrium. One of his cleanest summaries reads: “Motion merely seems, but stillness always is.”
Russell’s universe runs on paired, opposed expressions. He describes creation as a two-way wave process, with balanced rest at the center and rhythmic compression and expansion around it. In that framing, the wave carries the illusion of time, change, dimension, and substance.

Where Larson begins with motion as the primitive and treats space and time as reciprocal aspects of motion, Russell begins with stillness as the primitive and treats motion as the wave-generated appearance of stillness. Both treat motion as the primary feature of what we can experience and measure. Even when an object appears still—a table, for example—it is composed of activity at scales so small, structured, and rapid that the whole behaves as solid and stable.

Mainstream science already speaks in the language of oscillation and pattern at the quantum scale: frequencies, quantized states, wave-like behavior, resonance. Where views diverge is whether there is a deeper substrate beneath the fields we measure. Russell endorses such a substrate explicitly. Larson, by contrast, keeps his focus on what can be expressed in terms of motion and measurement; anything beyond that, in his framing, sits in a latent, undefined category that physics can gesture toward, but not directly capture.

What we can learn from both Larson and Russell is transmutability: the sense that “things” are not ultimate objects so much as conditions—states of organization that can change. While modern physics investigates whether the Planck length represents a meaningful lower bound for spacetime description (and whether reality might be discrete at the deepest scale), Larson rejected the instinct to treat progress as “divide the object into ever-smaller parts.” To him, the universe was motion—mathematical, lawful, and therefore transformable. To Russell, that same motion carries a further spiritual significance: the signature of life moving to and from an infinite source. From this view, particles can be described as corpuscles of energy, but less as final building blocks and more as snapshots of a much larger field in a particular phase or condition.

Larson’s most useful contribution for modern readers is the way he forces the conversation back to first principles. He treats space and time as descriptions of motion rather than containers that “hold” reality, and that single shift clarifies a surprising number of debates. It helps separate coordinates from causes and measurement from ontology. Even if a reader doesn’t adopt Larson’s full system, his approach encourages a more disciplined imagination that asks, “What assumptions did we sneak in because they were convenient?” and “What changes if we refuse to treat the reference frame as a thing?” In an era where physics increasingly flirts with ideas like emergent spacetime, structured vacuum, and field-first descriptions of matter, Larson’s insistence on conceptual hygiene is a reminder that foundations still matter and that bold simplifications, when done carefully, can open new doors.

Russell’s most useful contribution is his insistence that the universe behaves like an oscillator seeking balance, and that the deepest “cause” layer is stillness and therefore unperceivable. Even if a reader treats that as metaphor, it pushes the mind toward equilibrium, phase, polarity, compression, and expansion. Those concepts show up everywhere in modern physics, from resonance and standing waves to condensed matter analogues of spacetime.

Taken together, Larson and Russell offer something quietly hopeful: the idea that reality is intelligible not because it is made of tiny static parts, but because it is made of relationships, rhythms, and repeatable structure. Whether you begin from motion (Larson) or from stillness (Russell), both visions invite the same kind of inner upgrade—less fixation on “things,” more attention to patterns. The world is not composed of isolated entities, but of relationships between countless moving parts.

Sources and Further Reading:
Dewey B. Larson — New Light on Space and Time — April 1965.
Dewey B. Larson — Nothing But Motion (Volume I of the revised/enlarged The Structure of the Physical Universesequence) — 1979.
Dewey B. Larson — Basic Properties of Matter (Volume II of the revised/enlarged The Structure of the Physical Universe sequence) — December 1987 (preface dated; “first complete edition”).
Walter Russell — The Secret of Light — First published 1947.

You can view the article on substack with images here:
https://noraspinnor.substack.com/p/everything-is-motion-another-view

[joshchen]

Never heard of this guy but now I am going to check him out.

[Author]

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