Remarks on the nature of energy, and the correlation and transmutations of its various physical forms : being the introductory chapter to a new edition of The elements of natural philosophy / by Charles Brooke.

Charles Brooke

Date:: 1867

Credit: Remarks on the nature of energy, and the correlation and transmutations of its various physical forms : being the introductory chapter to a new edition of The elements of natural philosophy / by Charles Brooke. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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$and in default of such evidence, the contrary hypothesis is at least equally tenable ; and this interstitial-ether theory (in common with all preceding physical theories involving imponderability) is bur- dened with grave inconsistencies. In the first place the well-known phenomena of single and double refraction and polarization, whether of light or heat, necessitate the somewhat violent hypothesis that the elasticity of the supposed transmitting medium, ether, is not, as it is in all cognizable fluids, a fixed and definite quality capable of numerical estimation, but an ever-varying quality, depending quantitatively on the elasticity of adjacent matter, and in the case of double refraction, actually varying in two or in three directions, within the same substance: it would be not more re- pugnant to reason to assume that the elasticity of a gas is one thing in a glass bottle, and another in one of brass; or that the specific gravity of silver is a function of the moon’s age, or the melting point of gold dependent on the sun’s zenith distance. Secondly, the fundamental ideas of inertia, energy, and “work” are inseparably associated with gravitation, and a contradiction of terms seems to be implied, in ascribing either inertia or energy, i.e., the capability of doing work, to an imponderable particle, which is consequently destitute of attraction for any other particle in the universe. The known enormous velocity, probably not less than 250,000 miles in a second, at which electricity travels through a cop- per conductor is complete evidence that ordinary matter is capable of transmitting something (whether matter or motion it signifies nothing for the present argument) at a considerably greater velocity than the waves of light and heat, why should not appropriate kinds of matter be assumed capable of transmitting these also ? and if so, the need of the interstitial presence of ether ceases altogether ; and it may with great advantage be excluded from the domains of ponderable palpable matter, by the very mild hypothesis that it is not miscible with air, any more than oil or palpable ether with water, but that it floats above the boundary surface of our atmosphere: this hypothesis is not repugnant to reason, nor adverse to physical experience. On this supposition it is no longer needed to impute to ether imponderability, i.e., an exemption from the otherwise universal law of gravitation ; it will then be imperceptible, only because it exists beyond the reach of observation : and thus imponderability will cease to be reckoned amongst the physical attributes of matter. Moreover, as there are no means of limiting the possible amount of molecular dis- placement in a medium so attenuated as ether must be, an amount of energy is conceivable sufficient to impart effective motion to indefinitely denser matter; and thus, without doing any violence to the fundamental principles of dynamics, this denizen of infinite space may be assumed competent to its divine mission of impart-$