William Bower Taylor

“ That gravity should be innate, inherent, and essential to matter, so that one body may act upon another at a distance, through a vacuum, without the mediation of anything else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity, that I believe no man who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking can ever fall into it. ”

“ In opposition to all this ideal programme of an illimitable ocean of dynamic, with its treasures lying loose in space, to be absorbed by every projected ball or stone, it may be simply declared that from observation we have no reason whatever to believe the aether to be in any case a source of energy. We have absolutely no experience of any undulations originating in its broad expanse. It is never self-luminous ”

“ This central mass agitated with intestine motions of extreme violence in all directions, as in a boiling caldron, produces an intense light and heat, while detached particles at the surface, continually more and more broken up by the frequency and impetuosity of their collisions, acquire a subtilty transcending all conception of the imagination, and are finally thrown off in all directions with explosive force to immense distances, and with the velocity known as that of radiant light. ”

“ The long and constant persuasion that all the forces of nature are mutually dependent, having one common origin, or rather being different manifestations of one fundamental power, has made me often think upon the possibility of establishing by experiment, a connection between gravity and electricity, and so introducing the former into the group, the chain of which (including magnetism, chemical force, and heat,) binds so many and such varied exhibitions of force together by common relations. ”

“ Our principles do not therefore corroborate Newton's third law of motion, respecting the equality of action and reaction in attracting forces; for by our theory, a body might by the agency of the fluid medium, be impelled toward another, without any reciprocal action ; which is by no means surprising if we consider attraction not to be an inherent or essential property of matter, but merely the action of a third body. ”

“ I designate as atoms the last stage of division of matter. I admit that two bodies separated by an absolute void cannot act on each other ; that action takes place only by contact, the play of forces following the laws of ordinary mechanics. If there existed but a single kind of atoms, the interchange of forces occurring between equal masses, two atoms could not unite. Force and matter would exist, but not attraction. There are then at least two kinds of primordial atoms of different masses. ”

“ The familiar case of a wound-up clock or watch, with the pendulum or the balance-wheel at rest, is equally irreconcilable with any scheme of kinetic action or of a force involving as a function any " unit of time." As Professor Maxwell points out : " In both cases, until the clock or watch is set agoing, the existence of potential energy, whether in the clockweight or in the watch-spring, is not accompanied with any visible [260] motion. We must therefore admit that potential energy can exist in a body or system all whose parts are at rest." ”

“ Faraday thus sums up his own impressions: "For my own part, many considerations urge my mind toward the idea of a cause of gravity which is not resident in the particles of matter merely, but constantly in them and all space." (p. 231.) " I would much rather incline to believe that bodies affecting each other by gravitation act by lines of force of definite amount, or by an aether pervading all parts of space, than admit that the conservation of force could be dispensed with." ”

“ Even if we had not those proofs of the existence of a universal medium that the undulatory theory of light supplies, it would be well to admit the existence of media to which ordinary matter may be assumed to be entirely subordinate in all their potential relations, so as to give order to our ideas in tracing out the dynamical sequence of nature. ”

“ And thus, whether we contemplate the infinitely small or the infinitely grand, in every case comes back upon us the wide induction, that the action of matter in atom, in molecule, or in mass, is ever at a distance! Of actual contact there is probably no instance afforded in nature, excepting in the intimate substance of the ultimate atom. ”

“ In defining atoms as centers of pressure, they are thus no less distinguished on the one hand from centers of force than from the little hard bodies of the ordinary theories; for such centers of force are just as absolute and self-existent in the ordinary conception of them as those little bodies ; and in a scientific theory there can (except as temporary conveniences) be no absolute existences, entities. Hence (mechanical) force, or the cause of motion, is conceived not as an entity but as a condition, — the condition namely of a difference of pressure ”

“ Although the force of which I have spoken is clearly not gravity solely, as we know it, it is attraction developed from chemical activity, and connecting that greatest and most mysterious of all natural forces, action at a distance, with the more intelligible acts of matter. ”

“ In Newton's day the notion of a fluid which had no visible tendency to one part of space more than to another, keeping up an equilibrium with itself, and yet able to press heavier on one side of a body within it than on the other, was quite enough to gain incredulity." [9] Nor is it easy to perceive how the notion is made more credible in our day. The rarefaction of a free gas by heat is the direct effect of its increased elastic tension or pressure, and the two are proportional. ”

“ What is that mysterious force which causes two bodies to attract each other in the direct ratio of their masses and an inverse ratio of their distance ? Two bodies attract each other ! Then matter is not inert ! ”

“ Gravity must be caused by an agent acting constantly according to certain laws; but whether this agent be material or immaterial, I have left to the consideration of my readers." [7]
At the conclusion of the third book of his Principia, Newton remarks : " Hitherto I have not been able to discover the cause of those properties of gravity from phenomena, and I frame no hypothesis ; for whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is to be called an hypothesis. . . . To us it is enough that gravity does really exist, and act according to the laws which we have explained." ”

“ Space and time are conditions, but conditions absolutely necessary to the transformation of potential energy into kinetic, and of kinetic energy into potential ; but they themselves cannot be forms of energy. But if it be true that the mere force of gravity or tendency of the stone to fall to the ground is not the potential energy, but that this potential energy is the force multiplied by the space through which it can act, then space must become a form of potential energy. ”

“ Now the energy of a moving system is half the product of its momentum into its velocity. Hence the energy of the corpuscles which by their impacts on the ball during one second, urge it toward the earth, must be a number of foot-pounds equal to the number of feet over which a corpuscle travels in a second, that is to say, not less than thousands of millions. But this is only a small fraction of the energy of all the impacts which the atoms of the ball receive from the innumerable streams of corpuscles which fall upon it in all directions. ”

“ It does not appear how so vague and inexplicable a supposition is calculated to commend itself "to those who are fond of clear principles in philosophy." In his anxiety to avoid an "occult quality " in matter, this learned writer seems quite unconscious of the fact that by investing his aether with an "unknown manner of acting," he is just as fatally "having recourse to an unintelligible property." ”

“ The stone ball that may have lain a thousand years undisturbed on the brink of a precipice has during that time lost no fraction of its static tension, but will fall with absolutely the same dynamic effect as if thrown up to its seat by a cannon but a moment before. ”

“ If the attempts hitherto made by kinetic theorists to explain the tensile strength of a rope or of a chain by the pressure of a vis a tergo have been exceedingly lame and unsatisfactory, even the more direct examples of actual impact and propulsion are really as little serviceable to the hypothesis of contact action. If we have good reason to believe that the constituent molecules of a steel bar are actually separated by relatively large spaces of intense repulsion, — a fortiori must the physical impact of the most violent percussion be resolved into an action through a vacant space. ”

“ It is scarcely to be doubted that in this intervention, sagaciously investigated, will be found the secret or the true cause of the effects which are attributed to heat, to electricity, to magnetism, to universal attraction, to cohesion, to chemical affinities ; for all these mysterious and incomprehensible agencies are at bottom but co-ordinating hypotheses, — useful without doubt to our existing ignorance, but which the progress of true science will complete by dethroning. ”

“ The principle of the conservation of force would lead us to assume that when A and B attract each other less because of increasing distance, then some other exertion of power, either within or without them, is proportionately growing up. And again that when their distance is diminished, as from 10 to 1, the power of attraction, now increased a hundred-fold, has been produced out of some other form of power which has been equivalently reduced." [9] Were gravity merely a dynamic energy, generated in time and space by an anterior and exterior force, the inference would undoubtedly be correct. ”

“ The integral of gravitation is a function of space. Suppose a central homogeneous globe to augment in bulk by the descent of similar matter from an infinite distance in radial directions all around ; each descending element, on arriving at the surface of the globe, presents itself charged with a certain amount of mechanical force equivalent to the square velocity with which it impinges. ”

“ Thus if the conception of atoms is applied to the unequal and unequally-placed bodies of such a world as that presented to us, the law of universal attraction follows, and gravity is mechanically explained, that is, is referred to a mechanical conception. But it must be understood that the above proposition is given rather to show that as an actual law, universal attraction may be deduced from the theoretical conception of universal repulsion, than with any pretension to its being the best attainable form of an explanation of the law. ”

“ After I had revolved the subject a few times in my mind, it struck me that if gases instead of having their particles endued with repulsive forces, subject to so curious a limitation as Newton proposed, were made up of particles or atoms mutually impinging on one another and the sides of the vessel containing them, such a constitution of aeriform bodies would not only be more simple than repulsive powers, but as far as I could perceive, would be consistent with phenomena in other respects, and would admit of an easy application of the theory of heat by intestine motion. ”

“ The thoughtful philosopher Doctor Young, about a century later, commenting on Newton's suggestion of an aetherial medium — rarer toward and within dense bodies, — with great ingenuity remarks: "The effects of gravitation might be produced by a medium thus constituted, if its particles were repelled by all material substances with a force decreasing like other repulsive forces, simply as the distances increase. Its density would then be everywhere such as to produce the appearance of an attraction varying like that of gravitation. ”

“ Matter possessing only inertia and motion (whose product is momentum) would very speedily arrive at a state of stable and inert equilibrium, without having ever exhibited a single phenomenon of force, and without the possibility of any dynamic potential. ”

“ Beyond the facts of constant and of signal failure, these restless, resolute probings by the human mind in all directions, serve as the cumulative bases of a new induction ; and by the very sharpness of the contrasts brought to view at every point between the tentative conjecture and the determinate experience, they enforce the assurance, that whatever else the principle of gravitation may be, it is not in its essence any form of motion. ”

“ These venerable "adages" are about as valuable in directing us to the actual facts of nature, as that other celebrated adage of Zeno, " a body cannot move where it is not;" and conversely, "it cannot move where it is." ”

“ By extending the principles to find the temperatures of the planets, we arrive at an interesting conclusion, namely : supposing them to be all of the density of our earth, we bring out very nearly the amount of gravitation toward each of them which is actually found to exist. ”

“ Ever since the grand demonstration by Newton in 1682, that the moon is a falling body, observing precisely the same law of decline from a rectilinear path as the cannon-ball, and that it is therefore under the dominion of the same force, an eager and unceasing desire has been manifested to discover an antecedent or origin of this universal tendency of matter. ”

“ To refer the great fact of gravitation to some unimagined and unimaginable aether-motion, the special arrangements of which for effecting the desired purpose " elude research," is not to proffer an explanation, but to indulge in an illusion ”