Which student of Wilhelm Reich went on to develop a pseudo-scientific and spiritual concept called orgone, whose energy was present in the atmosphere and could be used to produce rain?
Orgone Orgone is a pseudo-scientific and spiritual concept described as an esoteric energy or hypothetical universal life force, originally proposed in the 1930s by Wilhelm Reich. As developed by Reich's student Charles Kelley after Reich's death in 1957, orgone was conceived as the anti-entropic principle of the universe, a creative substratum in all of nature comparable to Mesmer's animal magnetism (1779), to the Odic force (1845) of Carl Reichenbach and to Henri Bergson's "élan vital" (1907). Orgone was seen as a massless, omnipresent substance, similar to luminiferous aether, but more closely associated with living energy than with inert matter. It could allegedly coalesce to create organization on all scales, from the smallest microscopic units—called "bions" in orgone theory—to macroscopic structures like organisms, clouds, or even galaxies.
Stoic physics Stoic physics is the natural philosophy adopted by the Stoic philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome used to explain the natural processes at work in the universe. To the Stoics the universe is a single pantheistic God, but one which is also a material substance. The primitive substance of the universe is a divine essence ("pneuma") which is the basis of everything which exists. The separation of force from matter produces a divine fire ("aether") which, as the basis of all matter, is differentiated into elements and shaped by the tension caused by the "pneuma" working according to the divine reason ("logos") of the universe. These processes are responsible for the formation, the development, and ultimately, the destruction of the universe in a never-ending cycle ("palingenesis"). The human soul is an emanation from the fiery "aether" which permeates the universe, and sensation is transmission of "pneuma-currents" from objects, which interact with the substance of the mind, which is the soul's ruling part. The Stoics also recognised the existence of other gods and divine agents as manifestations of the one primitive God-substance.