great step in this speculation has been the discovery that a single medium may be made to serve not only for the numerous phenomena of optics, but, without ascribing to it any characteristics incompatible with a luminiferous ether, is equally available for the description and explanation of electric and magnetic fields, and finally may be made the basis for intelligible theories of the structure of matter.
To many minds this seemingly universal adaptability of the ether to the needs of physics almost removes it from the field of speculation; but it should not be forgotten that a system, entirely imaginary, may be devised, which fits all the known phenomena and appears to offer the only satisfactory explanation of the facts, and which subsequently is abandoned in favor of other views. The history of physics is full of instances where a theory is for a time regarded as final on account of its seeming completeness, only to give way to something entirely different.
In this consideration of the fundamental concepts I have attempted to distinguish between those which have the positive character of mathematical laws and which are entirely independent of all theories of the ultimate nature of matter and those which deal with the latter questions and which are essentially speculative. I have purposely refrained from taking that further step which plunges us from the heights of physics into the depths of philosophy.
With the statement that science in the ultimate analysis is nothing more than an attempt to classify and correlate our sensations the physicist has no quarrel. It is, indeed, a wholesome discipline for him to formulate for himself his own relations to his science in terms such as those which, to paraphrase and translate very freely the opening passages of his recent 'Treatise on Physics,' Chwolson[1] has employed.
For every one there exist two worlds, an inner and an outer, and our senses are the medium of communication between the two. The outer world has the property of acting upon our senses, to bring about certain changes, or, as we say, to exert certain stimuli.
The inner world, for any individual, consists of all those phenomena which are absolutely inaccessible (so far as direct observation goes) to other individuals. The stimulus from the outer world produces in our inner world a subjective perception which is dependent upon our consciousness. The subjective perception is made objective, viz., is assigned time and place in the outer world and given a name. The investigation of the processes by which this objectivication is performed is a function of philosophy.
Some such confession of faith is good for the man of science; lest he forget; but once it is made he is free to turn his face to the light once more, thankful that the investigation of objectivication is, indeed, a function of philosophy and that the only speculations in which he, as a physicist, is entitled to engage are those which are amenable at every step to mathematics and to the equally definite axioms and laws of mechanics.
- ↑ Chwolson, 'Physik,' Vol. I., Introduction.
