THE MODERN THEORY OF LK^T.* 



Bv Prof. Oliver J. Lodge, 



To persous occupied in other branches of learaiug-, aud not directly 

 engaged in the study of physical science, some rumor must probably 

 have travelled of the stir and activity manifest at the present time among 

 the votaries of that department of knowledge. 



It may serve a useful puri)ose if I try and explain to outsiders what 

 this stir is mainly about and why it exists. There is a proximate and 

 there is an ultimate cause. The proximate cause is certain experiments 

 exhibiting in a marked and easily recognizable way the already theoret- 

 ically predicted connection between electricity aud light. The ultimate 

 cause is that we begin to feel inklings and foretastes of theories, wider 

 tlian that of gravitation, more fundamental than any theories which 

 have yet been advanced; theories which, if successfully worked out, 

 will carry the banner of physical science far into the dark continent of 

 metaphysics, and will illuminate with a clear philosophy much that at 

 present is only dimly guessed. More explicitly, we begin to perceive 

 chinks of insight into the natures of electricity, of ;ether, of elasticity, 

 and even of matter itself We begin to have a kinetic theory of the 

 physical universe. 



We are living, not in a Newtonian, but at the beginning of a perhaps 

 still greater, Thomsoniau era. Greater not because any one man is 

 probably greater than Newton, t but because of the stupendousness of 

 the problems now waiting to be solved. There are a dozen men of 

 great magnitude, either now living or but recently deceased, to whom 

 what we now know towards these generalizations is in some measure 

 due, and the epoch of complete development may liardly be seen by 

 those now alive. It is proverbially rash to attempt prediction, but it 

 seems to me that it may well take a period of fifty years for these great 

 strides to be fully accomplished. If it does, and if progress goesou at 



* Bein<j the general substance of a lecture to the Ashmolean Society in the Univer- 

 sity of Oxford, on Monday, June 3, 1889. (University College Magazine, Liverpool^ 

 July, 1889. vol. IV, pp. 90-99.) 



tTbougli indeed a century hence it may be premature to offer an opinion on such 

 a point. 



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