Astronomy and General Physics Considered with Reference to Natural Theology

by William Whewell

In this manner light may be considered as constituted with a peculiar reference to the eyes of animals, and its leading properties may be looked upon as contrivances or adaptations to fit it for its visual office. And in such a point of view the perfection of the contrivance or adaptation must be allowed to be very remarkable.

3. But besides the properties of reflexion and refraction, the most obvious laws of light, an extraordinary variety of phenomena have lately been discovered, regulated by other laws of the most curious kind, uniting great complexity with great symmetry. We refer to the phenomena of diffraction, polarisation, and periodical colours, produced by crystals and by thin plates. We have, in these facts, a vast mass of properties and laws, offering a subject of study which has been pursued with eminent skill and intelligence. But these properties and laws, so far as has yet been discovered, exert no agency whatever, and have no purpose, in the general economy of nature. Beams of light polarised in contrary directions exhibit the most remarkable differences when they pass through certain crystals, but manifest no discoverable difference in their immediate impression on the eye. We have, therefore, here, a number of laws of light, which we cannot perceive to be established with any design which has a reference to the other parts of the universe.

Undoubtedly it is exceedingly possible that these differences of light may operate in some quarter, and in some way, which we cannot detect; and that these laws may have purposes and may answer ends of which we have no suspicion. All the analogy of nature teaches us a lesson of humility, with regard to the reliance we are to place on our discernment and judgment as to such matters. But with our present knowledge, we may observe, that this curious system of phenomena appears to be a collateral result of the mechanism by which the effects of light are produced; and therefore a necessary consequence of the existence of that element of which the offices are so numerous and so beneficent.

The new properties of light, and the speculations founded upon them, have led many persons to the belief of the undulatory theory; which, as we have said, is considered by some philosophers as demonstrated. If we adopt this theory, we consider the luminiferous ether to have no local motion; and to produce refraction and reflexion by the operation of its elasticity alone. We must necessarily suppose the tenuity of the ether to be extreme; and if we moreover suppose its tension to be very great, which the vast velocity of light requires us to suppose, the vibrations by which light is propagated will be transverse vibrations, that is the motion to and fro will be athwart the line along which the undulation travels; and from this circumstance all the laws of polarisation necessarily follow. And the properties of transverse vibrations, combined with the properties of vibrations in general, give rise to all the curious and numerous phenomena of colours of which we have spoken.

If the vibrations be transverse, they may be resolved into two different planes; this is polarisation: if they fall on a medium which has different elasticity in different directions, they will be divided into two sets of vibrations; this is double refraction; and so on. Some of the new properties, however, as the fringes of shadows and the colours of thin plates, follow from the undulatory theory, whether the vibrations be transverse or not.

It would appear, therefore, that the propagation of light by means of a subtle medium, leads necessarily to the extraordinary collection of properties which have recently been discovered; and, at any rate, its propagation by the transverse vibrations of such a medium does lead inevitably to these results.

Leaving it therefore to future times to point out the other reasons (or uses if they exist) of these newly discovered properties of light, in their bearing on other parts of the world, we may venture to say, that if light was to be propagated through transparent media by the undulations of a subtle fluid, these properties must result, as necessarily as the rainbow results from the unequal refrangibility of different colours. This phenomenon and those, appear alike to be the collateral consequences of the law’s impressed on light with a view to its principal offices.

Thus the exquisitely beautiful and symmetrical phenomena and laws of polarisation, and of crystalline and other effects, may be looked upon as indications of the delicacy and subtlety of the mechanism by which man, through his visual organs, is put in communication with the external world; is made acquainted with the forms and qualities of objects in the most remote regions of space; and is enabled, in some measure, to determine his position and relation in a universe in which he is but an atom.

4. If we suppose it clearly established that light is produced by the vibrations of an ether, we find considerations offer themselves, similar to those which occurred in the case of sound. The vibrations of this ether affect our organs with the sense of light and colour. Why, or how do they do this? It is only within certain limits that the effect is produced, and these limits are comparatively narrower here than in the case of sound. The whole scale of colour, from violet to crimson, lies between vibrations which are four hundred and fifty-eight million millions, and seven hundred and twenty-seven million millions in a second; a proportion much smaller than the corresponding ratio for perceptible sounds. Why should such vibrations produce perception in the eye, and no others? There must be here some peculiar adaptation of the sensitive powers to these wonderfully minute and condensed mechanical motions. What happens when the vibrations are slower than the red, or quicker than the blue? They do not produce vision: do they produce any effect? Have they any thing to do with heat or with electricity? We cannot tell. The ether must be as susceptible of these vibrations, as of those which produce vision. But the mechanism of the eye is adjusted to this latter kind only; and this precise kind, (whether alone or mixed with others,) proceeds from the sun and from other luminaries, and thus communicates to us the state of the visible universe. The mere material elements then are full of properties which we can understand no otherwise, than as the results of a refined contrivance.