now becomes
It is not easy to understand how an important science can issue from such premisses. Furthermore the simple balancing of a weight by the tension of the supporting spring receives a very artificial meaning. With equal reason we might start with our theories of force as fundamental, and define mass as force divided by acceleration. Again we should be in equal danger of reducing dynamical equations to such identities as
Also the permanent mass of a bar of iron receives a very artificial meaning.
[5. The Ether]. 5.1 The theory of stress between distant bodies, considered as an ultimate fact, was repudiated by Newton himself, but was adopted by some of his immediate successors. In the nineteenth century the belief in action at a distance has steadily lost ground.
There are four definite scientific reasons for the adoption of the opposite theory of the transmission of stress through an intermediate medium which we will call the 'ether.' These reasons are in addition to the somewhat vague philosophic preferences, based on the disconnection involved in spatial and temporal separation. In the first place, the wave theory of light also postulates an ether, and thus brings concurrent testimony to its existence. Secondly, Clerk Maxwell produced the formulae for the stresses in such an ether which, if they exist, would account for gravitational, electrostatic, and magnetic attractions. No theory of the nature of the ether is thereby produced which in any way explains why such stresses exist; and thus their existence is so far just as much a disconnected assumption as that of the direct stresses between distant bodies. Thirdly, Clerk Maxwell's equations of the electromagnetic field presuppose events and physical properties of apparently empty space. Accordingly there must be something, i.e. an ether, in the empty space to which these properties belong. These equations are now recognised as the foundations of the exact science of electromagnetism, and stand on a level with Newton's equations of motion. Thus another testimony is added to the existence of an ether.
Lastly, Clerk Maxwell's identification of light with electromagnetic waves shows that the same ether is required by the apparently diverse optical and electromagnetic phenomena. The objection is removed that fresh properties have to be ascribed to the ether by each of the distinct lines of thought which postulate it.
It will be observed that gravitation stands outside this unification of scientific theory due to Maxwell's work, except so far that we know the stresses in the ether which would produce it.