The concepts and theories of modern physics / By J.B. Stallo.

  • John Stallo
Date:
1900
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The concepts and theories of modern physics / By J.B. Stallo. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    261/376 (page 211)
    However dissonant from the teachings of our fa- miliar experience these propositions seem, it is claimed that they are by no means without empirical warrant. of mind for surveying the ‘‘Unseen Universe”): “The properties of space,” says Tait, “ involving (we know not why) the essential element 6f three dimensions, have recently been subjected to a careful scnitiny by mathematicians of the highest order, such asKiemannand Helmholtz; and the remit of their inquiries leaves it as yet undecided whether space may or may not have precisely the same properties throughout the universe. To obtain an idea of what is meant by such a statement, consider that in crumpling a leaf of paper, which may be taken as representing space of two dimensions, we may have some portions of it plane, and other por- tions more or less cylindrically or conically curved. But an inhabitant of such a sheet, though living in space of two dimensions only, and there- fore, we might say beforehand, incapable of appreciating the third di- mension, would certainly feel some difference of sensations in passing from portions of his space which were less to other portions which were more curved. So it is possible that, in the rapid march of the solar system through space, we may be gradually passing to regions in which .space has not pi-eciscly the same properties as we fnd here—where it may have some- thing in three dimensions analogous to curvature in two dimensions—some- thing, in fact, schich will necessarily imply a fourth-dimension change of form in portions of matter in order that they may adapt themselves to their new locality. P. G. Tait, On Some Recent Advances in Physical Science, p. 5. In keeping with this passage is a note of the distinguished mathe- matician, Professor J. J. Sylvester, to his opening address to the Mathe- matical and Physical Section of the British Association at Exeter, in 1869, as follows: “It is well known, to those who have gone into these views, that the laws of motion accepted as a fact suffice to prove in a general way that the space we live in is a flat or level space (a ‘ homa- loid ’), our existence therein being assimilable to the life of a bookworm in the flat space ; but what if the page should be xmdergoing a process of gradxial bending inio a curved form ? Mr. W. K. Clifford has indulged in some remarkable speculations as to the possibility of our being able to infer, from certain unexplained phenomena of light and magnetism, the fact of our level space of three dimensions being in the act of under- going in space of four dimensions (space as inconceivable to us as our space to our supposititious .bookworm) a distortion analogous to the rum- pling of the page. I know there are many who, like my honored and deeply lamented friend, the late eminent Professor Donkin, regard the alleged notion of generalized space as only a disguised form of algcbrai-