THE AETHER

THE BOOK: A History of the Theories of Aether & Electricity by Sir Edmund Whitaker 1901, Unique, controversial, and frequently cited, this survey offers highly detailed accounts concerning the development of ideas and theories about the nature of electricity and space (aether). Readily accessible to general readers as well as high school students, teachers, and undergraduates, it includes much information unavailable elsewhere. This single-volume edition comprises both The Classical Theories and The Modern Theories, which were originally published separately. The first volume covers the theories of classical physics from the age of the Greek philosophers to the late 19th century. The second volume chronicles discoveries that led to the advances of modern physics, focusing on special relativity, quantum theories, general relativity, matrix mechanics, and wave mechanics. Noted historian of science I. Bernard Cohen, who reviewed these books for Scientific American, observed, "I know of no other history of electricity which is as sound as Whittaker's. All those who have found stimulation from his works will read this informative and accurate history with interest and profit."A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity by Edmund Taylor Whittaker 1910, Chapter I: The theories of the aether in the seventeenth century. A summery of A History of the RATHER lengthy pretty technical at times chapter, so I picked out the juiciest paragraphs, it still can get technical at times and I know people don't care for that as a rule, no glassy eyes here buster buddy! This essay is half old and half new, I added a few more paragraphs updating it, Example paragraph: In any case, light and aether are capable of mutual interaction; aether is in fact the intermediary between light and ponderable matter. When ray of light meets a stratum of aether denser or rarer than that through which it has lately been passing, it is, in general, deflected from its rectilinear course; and differences of density of the aether between one material medium and another account on these principles for the reflexion and refraction of light. The condensation or rarefaction of the aether due to a material body extends to some little distance from the surface of the body, so that the inflexion due to it is really continuous, and not abrupt; and this further explains diffraction, which Newton took to be "only a new kind of refraction, caused, perhaps, by the external aether's beginning to grow rarer a little before it came at the opake body, than it was in free spaces." Theories of Aether and Electricity by Edmund Taylor Whittaker 1910 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_History_of_the_Theories_of_Aether_and_Electricity/Chapter_1