Making of man : a study in evolution / by Sir Oliver Lodge.

  • Oliver Lodge
Date:
1924
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Making of man : a study in evolution / by Sir Oliver Lodge. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    28/194 (page 24)
    changeable. Strictly speaking, Matter is not conserved, nor is Energy. What is con¬ served is the sum of the two.1 Matter is turning out to be one of the forms of energy, —a newly discovered form, discovered largely through the genius of Einstein. Hitherto we have known of energy in many forms, all which have been interchangeable with each other: mechanical motion, elastic strain, heat, light, sound, and the rest. But now that we know that matter is composed of positive and negative electric charges, whose mass can be accounted for by their electric fields—which certainly exist in the Ether and represent or display some of its properties,—we are beginning to realise that matter is one of the forms which its rotatory or circulating motion, or some other modification as yet unspecified, can take; a form which is not intangible or elusive like the unmodified Ether, but for which we have sense-organs, and with which we are therefore exceedingly, perhaps con¬ temptuously, familiar. And now, in the 1 Haeckel of Jena said something like this, years ago, in advance of demonstration. At that time I disagreed with him, and said so; but recent progress has justified his speculation. The assertions of men of genius are often of value : their denials, seldom or never.