We are thus brought, by a close examination of facts, rather
to the idea that the properties of the ether are not wholly reducible
to the rules of ordinary mechanics.
The physicist has therefore not yet succeeded in answering the
question often put to him by the philosopher: "Has the ether really an
objective existence?" However, it is not necessary to know the answer
in order to utilize the ether. In its ideal properties we find the
means of determining the form of equations which are valid, and to the
learned detached from all metaphysical prepossession this is the
essential point.
CHAPTER VII
A CHAPTER IN THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE: WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY
Sec. 1
I have endeavoured in this book to set forth impartially the ideas
dominant at this moment in the domain of physics, and to make known
the facts essential to them. I have had to quote the authors of the
principal discoveries in order to be able to class and, in some sort,
to name these discoveries; but I in no way claim to write even a
summary history of the physics of the day.
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