Oliver Lodge Quotes

It must be admitted that among a certain number of advanced mathematical physicists whose work has lain mainly in the twentieth century, the ether is regarded with suspicion, or even with contempt. And some of the opponents go so far as to as to say that the nineteenth century idea of the ether has failed to establish itself, and that in consequence the whole idea of the ether is under a cloud, and that it is only upheld by a few antiquated supporters, who, though are willing to admit many modifications in the original nineteenth century notions of an ether, feel the need of a medium capable of performing the functions attributed to it.

The waves of light are not anything mechanical or material, but are something electrical and magnetic—they are, in fact, electrical disturbances periodic in space and time, and travelling with a known and tremendous speed through the ether of space. Their very existence depends upon the ether, and their speed of propagation is its best known and most certain quantitative property.

Death is not a word to fear, any more than birth is. We change our state at birth, and come into the world of air and sense and myriad existence; we change our state at death and enter a region of—what?

All potential energy exists in the ether. It may vibrate, and it may rotate, but as regards locomotion it is stationary—the most stationary body we know: absolutely stationary, so to speak; our standard of rest.

The oldest and best known function for an ether is the conveyance of light, and hence the name "luminiferous" was applied to it, though at the present day many functions are known, and more will almost certainly be discovered.

Microscopic organisms may have troublesome and destructive effects, but in themselves they can be be studied with interest and avidity.

What properties are essential to a medium capable of transmitting wave motion? Roughly, we may say two: elasticity and inertia.

I have made no secret of my conviction, not merely that personality persists, but that its continued existence is more entwined with the life of every day than has been generally imagined; that there is no real breach of continuity between the dead and the living; and that methods of intercommunion across what has been deemed a gulf can be set going in response to the urgent demand of affection,—that in fact as Diotima told Socrates (Symposium, 202 and 203),

I am as convinced of continued existence, on the other side of death, as I am of existence here. It may said, you cannot be sure as you are of sensory experience. I say I can. A physicist is never limited to direct sensory impressions, he has to deal with a multitude of conceptions and things for which he has no physical organ ....

Life must be considered sui generis; it is not a form of energy, nor can it be expressed in terms of something else.

All we know at present of locomotion is the locomotion of one piece of matter with reference to other pieces. That can be freely granted, and the whole edifice of physics is consistent with the idea that locomotion through the ether is impossible to measure. But the impossibility has never been proved, and some day an exceptional phenomenon may be found.

A body can only act immediately on what it is in contact with; it must be by the action of contiguous particles—that is, practically, through a continuous medium, that force can be transmitted across space.

Motion and force are our primary objects of experience and consciousness; and in terms of them all other less familiar occurrences may conceivably be studied and grasped.

It is not the germ cell itself, but the bodily accretion or appendage, which is abandoned by life, and which accordingly, dies and decays.

Every great revelation is likely to have been foreshadowed in more or less imperfect forms, so as to prepare our minds and make ready the way for complete perception hereafter. It is probable that the human race is quite incompetent to receive a really great idea the first time it is offered.