THE 



POPULAR SCIENCE 



MONTHLY. 



AUGUST, 1910 

 THE PAST AND PEESENT STATUS OF THE ETHEE 1 



By Professor ARTHUR GORDON WEBSTER 



CLARK UNIVERSITY 



IN a recent letter to the New York Nation, Professor William James, 

 in describing the philosophy of M. Emile Boutroux, makes the 

 statement that " theories result from psychological variations, just as 

 Eoosevelts and Eockefellers result from biological variations." Of the 

 entities of science he says: 



The creative touch of human reason was needed in each case for the extrica- 

 tion; and that those particular creations resulted rather than a hundred others 

 just as possible, is one of those selective interactions between living minds and 

 their environment which can be " understood " when once it has occurred, but 

 which no acquaintance with the previous conditions can show to an outsider 

 that it was the sole thing possible. 



Considering the prevalence of such philosophical views, and the 

 fact that many persons believe that physics is now undergoing a sort 

 of crisis, in which many of our most cherished ideas are about to be 

 relegated to the scrap-heap, I believe it to be not without profit to con- 

 sider the past and present condition of our views with regard to the 

 luminiferous ether, and to cautiously forecast their future. 



Certainly the postulate of the existence of the ether has been until 

 very recently one of the fundamentals of physics (including astron- 

 omy). At the congresses of arts and sciences held at Si Louis in 

 1904, the subject of physics was, like all Gaul, divided into three parts, 

 physics of matter, physics of ether, physics of the electron, and al- 

 though this division was, I believe, not made by a physicist, this must 

 have made little difference. In an interesting book published less than 

 a year ago by Sir Oliver Lodge, entitled " The Ether of Space," the 

 properties of the ether are set forth with a concreteness and dogmatic 

 manner that is now becoming unfashionable, and relieves that writer 



x Read at a meeting of the American Philosophical Society, April 22, 1910. 



VOL. lxxvii. — 8. 



