The New Physics and Its Evolution | Page 4

cannot exceed that of light--Ratio of charge to
mass and its variation--Electron simple electric charge--Phenomena
produced by its acceleration.

§ 4. New Views on Ether and Matter: Insufficiency of Larmor's
view--Ether definable by electric and magnetic fields--Is matter all
electrons? Atom probably positive centre surrounded by negative
electrons--Ignorance concerning positive particles--Successive
transformations of matter probable --Gravitation still unaccounted for.

CHAPTER XI
THE FUTURE OF PHYSICS
Persistence of ambition to discover supreme principle in
physics--Supremacy of electron theory at present time--Doubtless
destined to disappear like others-- Constant progress of science
predicted--Immense field open before it.
INDEX OF NAMES
INDEX OF SUBJECTS

CHAPTER I
THE EVOLUTION OF PHYSICS
The now numerous public which tries with some success to keep
abreast of the movement in science, from seeing its mental habits every
day upset, and from occasionally witnessing unexpected discoveries
that produce a more lively sensation from their reaction on social life,
is led to suppose that we live in a really exceptional epoch, scored by
profound crises and illustrated by extraordinary discoveries, whose
singularity surpasses everything known in the past. Thus we often hear
it said that physics, in particular, has of late years undergone a veritable
revolution; that all its principles have been made new, that all the
edifices constructed by our fathers have been overthrown, and that on
the field thus cleared has sprung up the most abundant harvest that has

ever enriched the domain of science.
It is in fact true that the crop becomes richer and more fruitful, thanks
to the development of our laboratories, and that the quantity of seekers
has considerably increased in all countries, while their quality has not
diminished. We should be sustaining an absolute paradox, and at the
same time committing a crying injustice, were we to contest the high
importance of recent progress, and to seek to diminish the glory of
contemporary physicists. Yet it may be as well not to give way to
exaggerations, however pardonable, and to guard against facile
illusions. On closer examination it will be seen that our predecessors
might at several periods in history have conceived, as legitimately as
ourselves, similar sentiments of scientific pride, and have felt that the
world was about to appear to them transformed and under an aspect
until then absolutely unknown.
Let us take an example which is salient enough; for, however arbitrary
the conventional division of time may appear to a physicist's eyes, it is
natural, when instituting a comparison between two epochs, to choose
those which extend over a space of half a score of years, and are
separated from each other by the gap of a century. Let us, then, go back
a hundred years and examine what would have been the state of mind
of an erudite amateur who had read and understood the chief
publications on physical research between 1800 and 1810.
Let us suppose that this intelligent and attentive spectator witnessed in
1800 the discovery of the galvanic battery by Volta. He might from that
moment have felt a presentiment that a prodigious transformation was
about to occur in our mode of regarding electrical phenomena. Brought
up in the ideas of Coulomb and Franklin, he might till then have
imagined that electricity had unveiled nearly all its mysteries, when an
entirely original apparatus suddenly gave birth to applications of the
highest interest, and excited the blossoming of theories of immense
philosophical extent.
In the treatises on physics published a little later, we find traces of the
astonishment produced by this sudden revelation of a new world.
"Electricity," wrote the Abbé Haüy, "enriched by the labour of so many

distinguished physicists, seemed to have reached the term when a
science has no further important steps before it, and only leaves to
those who cultivate it the hope of confirming the discoveries of their
predecessors, and of casting a brighter light on the truths revealed. One
would have thought that all researches for diversifying the results of
experiment were exhausted, and that theory itself could only be
augmented by the addition of a greater degree of precision to the
applications of principles already known. While science thus appeared
to be making for repose, the phenomena of the convulsive movements
observed by Galvani in the muscles of a frog when connected by metal
were brought to the attention and astonishment of physicists.... Volta,
in that Italy which had been the cradle of the new knowledge,
discovered the principle of its true theory in a fact which reduces the
explanation of all the phenomena in question to the simple contact of
two substances of different nature. This fact became in his hands the
germ of the admirable apparatus to which its manner of being and its
fecundity assign one of the chief places among those with which the
genius of mankind