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

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.

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

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.