Aether and Gravitation

by William George Hooper

Herschel, writing on the same subject in his Natural Philosophy, writes thus with regard to experience: “We have pointed out that the great, and indeed the only ultimate source of our knowledge of nature, and its laws, is experience. By which I mean, not the experience of one man only, or of one generation, but the accumulated experience of all mankind in all ages registered in books or recorded in tradition. But experience may be acquired in two ways, either first by noticing facts as they occur without any attempt to influence the frequency of their occurrence, or to vary the circumstances under which they occur. This is observation. Second, by putting in action causes and agents over which we have no control, and purposely varying their combination, and then noticing what effects take place. This is experiment. To these two sources we must look as the fountains of all natural science.”

Herschel further writes: “Experience once recognized as the fountain of all our knowledge of nature, it follows, that in our study of nature and its laws, we ought at once to make up our minds to dismiss, as idle prejudices, or at least suspend as premature, all preconceived notion of what might, or ought to be the order of nature in any proposed case, and content ourselves as a plain matter of fact with what is. To experience we refer as the only ground for all physical enquiry. But before experience itself can be used to advantage, there is one preliminary step to make which depends wholly upon ourselves.”

“It is the absolute dismissal and clearing the mind of all prejudices from whatever source arising, and the determination to stand or fall by the result of direct appeal to facts in the first instance, and to strict logical deduction from them afterwards.”

From extracts like these, from such men as Newton and Herschel, it can at once be seen that experience, and experience alone, should be the chief fountain from whence we draw all our data to form the bases of any hypothesis or theory. If the hypothesis formed is contradicted by the result of any present or future observation or experiment, then such hypothesis will either become untenable, or must be so modified as to take in the new fact furnished by that observation and experiment.

It is a sine quâ non of all true philosophy, that philosophy should always agree with experience. To the extent that our Philosophy of Nature fails to agree with our experience, or with the results of observation and experiment, then to that extent it ceases to be philosophy. It may be a hypothesis or even a theory, but certainly it is not true Philosophy.

Now, in the elaboration and development of the theory as to the physical cause of Gravitation, I can premise that nothing will be postulated or supposed, unless such supposition can be directly verified by our own observation and experiments.

Any theory or hypotheses that are contradicted by our own experience in its widest form, will find no place in the development of this work. Further, any present accepted theory in relation to any natural phenomena, which is controverted by experiment, or observation, will be rejected as untenable in the scheme of Natural Philosophy to be submitted to the reader.

Whatever else the theory suggested may, or may not be, one thing it certainly shall be, and that is, that it shall be strictly based upon the Philosophical Rules as given by some of the greatest philosophers the world has ever seen. I do not premise that the hypotheses advanced will be strictly correct in every detail.

That would be to assume that my experience of all natural phenomena was perfect. To the extent that our experience is limited, to that extent our hypotheses will be limited and faulty. It would need an Infinite mind to form a perfect theory of the philosophy of the universe, because only an Infinite mind possesses infinite experience. A finite mind can, however, form true philosophical conceptions of natural phenomena, if that mind will only follow the guidance of his own experience, and be willing to accept the teaching that always arises from the results of that experience. In order to do this, however, it must be observed, as Herschel points out, that all old prejudices must be put away, and the question or problem to be considered must be viewed with an open mind. Let me illustrate what I mean. Suppose, for example, that for two hundred years, chalk had always been thought to be a mineral, and then, owing to the development of the microscope, and to the increased magnifying powers of the lenses, it was conclusively demonstrated that chalk is made up of the shells and remains of certain organisms that lived in the sea ages ago. Would it be philosophical to throw over the results of the microscopical research, and, simply because for two hundred years chalk had been thought to be a mineral, to argue, and still retain the idea that chalk was a mineral?

Such a result would be entirely opposed to all the teaching and principles of philosophy. In a similar way, suppose in the development of the physical cause of Gravitation, a certain conception of the universal Aether has to be put forth in order to account for Gravitation, and that that conception is opposed to some of the theories which have been held relative to the Aether medium for the past two hundred years; but that the conception so advanced is supported by the experiments and observation of some of the ablest scientists of the present century, would it be philosophical to reject the newer conception which harmonized with all experiment and observation, and still retain the old conception of the aetherial medium; or, to accept the newer conception of that medium, and to reject some of the ideas included in the old conception? From a purely philosophic standpoint, there can only be one reply, which would be in favour of the newer conception, by which our philosophy would be brought into harmony with our experience.