Page:A history of the theories of aether and electricity. Whittacker E.T. (1910).pdf/465

on Newton's laws of motion, does not supply any criterion by which rest may be distinguished from uniform motion; for if the laws of motion are applicable when the position of bodies is referred to any particular set of axes, they will be equally applicable when position is referred to any other set of axes which have a uniform motion of translation relative to these.

The older theories of electrostatics, magnetism, and electrodynamics, which are based on the conception of action at a distance, are concerned only with relative configurations and motions, and are therefore useless in the search for a basis of absolute reckoning.

But the existence of an aether, which is postulated in the undulatory theory of light, seems at first sight to involve the conceptions of rest and motion relative to it, and thus to afford a means of specifying absolute position. Suppose, for instance, that a disturbance is generated at any point in free aether; this disturbance will spread outwards in the form of a sphere; and the centre of this sphere will for all subsequent time occupy an unchanged position relative to the aether. In this way, or in many other ways, we might hope to determine, by electrical or optical experiments, the velocity of the earth relative to the aether.

The failure of such experiments as had been tried led FitzGerald^[1] to suggest that the dimensions of material bodies undergo contraction when the bodies are in motion relative to the aether. By the transformation of Lorentz and Larmor, as we have seen, this hypothesis came to be expressed in a new form; namely that the equation of the figure of the body, referred to a frame of reference moving with it, is always the same, but that frames of reference which are in notion relative to each other are based on different standards of length and time. This way of regarding the matter brings into prominence the fundamental questions involved. Before speaking of lengths and velocities, it is necessary to examine the nature of systems of measurement of space and time.

1. Cf. p. 432.