Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 24.djvu/861

Rh designated as the Newton of the science of optics.

The optical theory which reigned in the scientific world until the beginning of the present century was known as the theory of emission, which assumed that all luminous effects are due to the darting, rebounding, and deflecting of some kind of material corpuscles or particles. The idea of vibratory or undulatory action as the cause of light was early broached by Huygens and maintained later by Euler, but was generally regarded as a crude speculation without scientific value. Dr. Young, devoting his great powers to optical research, soon perceived that the evidence was decisive in favor of the undulatory view; and, in the case of the interference of light, he proved that it affords a complete interpretation of the effects where the emission theory wholly breaks down. He developed his ideas in elaborate papers published in the "Proceedings of the Royal Society," and gave them mature expression in the Bakerian Lecture of 1802. It was at once seen by a few discerning scientific men that the old controversy between the theories of light was virtually brought to an end. But the old explanation, long accepted, and sanctioned by the great authority of Newton, was, of course, still supreme, while the new explanation had its way to make in scientific circles and in the general mind.

The "Edinburgh Review" now appears upon the scene. This quarterly had just been established, and was supported by a brilliant corps of writers who attracted wide attention, and gave to the periodical an extensive and powerful influence. Henry Brougham, afterward Lord Chancellor of England, was among its founders, and was one of its most versatile and effective writers, and he had himself dabbled somewhat in optical science. He reviewed Young's Bakerian Lecture on "The Theory of Light and Colors," which appeared in the "Philosophical Transactions," and the article was published in the first volume of the new Edinburgh quarterly issued in 1803. It was an insulting and malignant attack upon Dr. Young, whom he ridiculed in the coarsest manner. Mr. Brougham characterized the Bakerian Lecture as worthless, and bitterly denounced the authorities of the Royal Society for degrading science by admitting such foolish speculations into their published proceedings. The event is so memorable that we shall be excused for making some quotations from the article. It opens with these words: "As this paper contains nothing which deserves the name either of experiment or discovery, and as it is in fact destitute of every species of merit, we should have allowed it to pass among the multitude of those articles which must always find admittance into the collections of a society which is pledged to publish two or three volumes every year....

"We wish to raise our feeble voice against innovations that can have no other effect than to check the progress of Science, and renew all those wild phantoms of the imagination which Bacon and Newton put to flight from her temple....

" It is difficult to argue with an author whose mind is filled with a medium of so fickle a vibratory nature. Were we to take the trouble to refute him, he might tell us, 'My opinion is changed, and I have abandoned that hypothesis, but here is another for you.'...

"We demand if the world of science, which Newton once illuminated, is to be as changeable in its modes as the world of taste, which is directed by the will of a silly woman or a pampered fop. Has the Royal Society degraded its publications into new and fashionable theories for the ladies who attend the Royal Institution? Proh pudor! Let the professor continue to amuse his audience with an endless variety of