Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 66.djvu/64

60 optical theory may be deemed conclusive, possibly final, so far as the general proposition is concerned that it is the science of a wave-motion. In a few cases, indeed, such as the photography of the actual nodes of a standing waves ystemsystem [sic], by Wiener, we reach the firm ground of direct observation.

Optics has nevertheless certain distinctly speculative features. Wave-motion demands a medium. The enormous velocity of light excludes known forms of matter; the transmission of radiation in vacuo and through outer space from the most remote regions of the universe, and at the same time through solids such as glass demands that this medium shall have properties very different from that of any substance with which chemistry has made us acquainted.

The assumption of a medium is, indeed, an intellectual necessity and the attempt to specify definitely the properties which it must possess in order to fulfill the extraordinary functions assigned to it has afforded a field for the highest display of scientific acumen. While the problem of the mechanism of the luminiferous ether has not as yet met with a satisfactory solution, the ingenuity and imaginative power developed in the attack upon its difficulties command our admiration.

Happily the development of what may be termed the older optics did not depend upon any complete formulation of the mechanics of the ether. Just as the whole of the older mechanics was built up from Kepler's laws, Newton's laws of motion, the law of gravitational attraction, the law of inverse squares, etc., without any necessity of describing the mechanics of gravitation or of any force, or of matter itself, so the system of geometrical relations involved in the consideration of reflection and refraction, diffraction, interference and polarization was brought to virtual completion without introducing the troublesome questions of the nature of the ether and the constitution of matter.

Underlying this field of geometrical optics or what I have just termed the older optics are, however, a host of fundamental questions of the utmost interest and importance, the treatment of which depends upon molecular mechanics and the mechanics of the ether. Our theories as to the nature and causes of radiation, of absorption and of dispersion, for example, belong to the newer optics and are based upon our conceptions of the constitution of matter; and since our ideas concerning the nature of matter, like our knowledge of the ether, is purely speculative, the science of optics has a doubly speculative basis. One type of selective absorption, for example, is ascribed to resonance of the particles of the absorbing substance, and our modern dispersion theories depend upon the assumption of natural periods of vibration of the particles of the refracting medium of the same order of frequency as that of the light waves. When the frequency of the waves falling upon a substance coincides with the natural period of vibration of the particles of the latter we have selective absorption, and