4 2 4 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



After examination of the matter in his paper of 1887, " On the 

 Propagation of Laminar Motion through a Turbulently Moving 

 Inviscid Liquid," in which he derived equations similar to 

 Maxwell's, the turbulent ether full of vortical motion did not 

 satisfy Lord Kelvin, owing to the uncertainty that irregularity 

 would not arise in the properties of the medium within the 

 period of a wave or vibration, due to possible rearrangement 

 of the turbulent state of motion within it destroying its average 

 homogeneousness. 



The two lines of investigation arising from considerations 

 of vortex motion had a permanent influence in determining 

 Lord Kelvin's later views. The abandonment of the idea that 

 ether is a fluid, presenting appearances of elasticity due to 

 motion, turned him once more to seek for some form of elastic 

 solid ether, as this seemed to him to present the simplest 

 and the only certain foundation of any theory fulfilling the 

 requirements of the wave theory of light. The failure of the 

 explanation of atomic properties by motion turned him towards 

 the statical foundations of atomic structure dealt with in the 



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Baltimore Lectures and later papers, and made him regard it 

 as " extremely improbable that differences of arrangement of 

 atoms all equal and similar could suffice to explain all the 

 different chemical and other properties of the great number 

 of substances now commonly called chemical elements." 

 Practically the whole of his later work, emanating directly 

 from his philosophic views — comprising the last six papers of 

 vol. iii of his Collected Papers which relate chiefly to the proposed 

 gyrostatic structure for ether, with the whole of the Baltimore 

 Lectures, and the papers in vols, iv, v, and vi on Molecular and 

 Crystalline Theory, on Voltaic Theory, Radioactivity, Electrons, 

 and on Waves on Water — constitute a pursuance of his original 

 aim of reconciling Optical and Electromagnetic Theory on some 

 elastic solid theory, and of finding a relation between matter 

 and ether consistent with this view. 



Amongst the later papers, the subjects which received most 

 of Lord Kelvin's attention were those relating to Atoms and 

 Electrons and Waves on Water. Of these, perhaps the most 

 interesting, and that bearing most strongly on modern views 

 on the electrical theory of matter, is the first-mentioned, which 

 he refers to as Atomic Electrostatics. Here, as always in the 

 matter of foundations, Lord Kelvin is conservative, preferring 



