Physicists From England

"I have been favoured by a sight of the forthcoming series of Dr. Faraday's admirable "Researches;" in which that assiduous and successful philosopher labours to prove by experiment that electrical induction is transmitted to distant bodies by intervening matter."

"As a philosopher, his first great characteristic was the trust which he put in facts. He said of himself, "In early life I was a very lively imaginative person, who could believe in the Arabian Nights as easily as in the Encyclopedia, but facts were important to me, and saved me. I could trust a fact." Over and over again he showed his love of experiments in his writings and lectures: "Without experiment I am nothing." "But still try, for who knows what is possible?" "All our theories are fixed upon uncertain data, and all of them want alteration and support from facts." "One thing, however, is fortunate, which is, that whatever our opinions, they do not alter nor derange the laws of nature." His second great characteristic was his imagination. It rose sometimes to divination, or scientific second sight, and led him to anticipate results that he or others afterwards proved to be true."

"In 1831 his original researches began to center about the relation of electricity and magnetism. ...Even as early as 1824 he had noticed the effects of a current of electricity upon a magnet. Now he found that this electrical action could be increased if the wire carrying the current was made into a coil. From that point he went on to study the push or pulling action of the coil upon the magnet, the effect of having a coil of more turns, and a way by which the coil and magnet, if free to move, could be made to move around each other. He was working out the principles that operate in today's electric motors. By 1831 he had reversed the problem... He had shown that the mere motion of the magnet within a closed-end coil was enough to set moving through the coil a small current that had not been there before. He called this new current an "induced" one and proceeded to study how the current could be increased in its quantity and intensity. The experimental results were revolutionary. The principles of induction discovered by Faraday are used today in telephones, induction coils, electric generators, transformers, the motors of electric clocks, and dozens of other pieces of electrical equipment."

"He was little interested mathematics or theory; for example, when his ideas on magnetic fields were extensively developed later by James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879), Faraday was little concerned with the results. His own scientific career was characterized by simple ideas and simple experiments."

"Study of the conduction of electricity in liquids became possible at the beginning of the nineteenth century, following the discovery of the electrolytic cell by Volta in 1800, which provided the first continuous source of electric current. It was soon discovered that the conduction of electricity by solutions is accompanied by chemical reactions at the electrodes which serve to conduct the current into and out of the solution. Nicholson and Carlisle demonstrated the decomposition of water into hydrogen and oxygen by a current in 1801. Davy's discovery of sodium and potassium metals by electrolysis of moist soda and [caustic] potash was a striking example of the novelty of electrochemical decomposition. Many of the phenomena of electrolysis were already known when Michael Faraday began his researches. It was the quantitative relationship between electrochemical change and current which interested Faraday and enabled him to correlate the mass of experimental data that had accumulated since 1800. Faraday's laws of electrolysis, which were published in 1833, state: (1) that the amount of chemical decomposition produced by an electric current (that is, the mass of substance deposited or dissolved at an electrode) is proportional to the quantity of electricity passed. (2) that the amounts of different substances released or dissolved at electrodes by the same quantity of electricity are proportional to their chemical equivalents. From the second law, it follows that the amount of electricity required to liberate or dissolve one equivalent weight of any substance by electrolysis is constant. It was not until after Faraday's death that the significance of his laws of electrolysis for atomic theory was realized. In 1881 von Helmholtz pointed out that if elementary substances are composed of atoms, it follows from Faraday's laws of electrolysis that electricity also is composed of elementary portions which behave like atoms of electricity. Investigations on the conduction of electricity by gases led to the identification of the electron as the fundamental unit of electricity at the end of the century. Faraday's positive and negative ions are therefore atoms (or groups of atoms or radicals)) with a deficiency or an excess of an integral number of electrons, where the integral number is the valency of the atom. The ions move in opposite directions through the solution to the electrodes where their charges are neutralised, causing them to be discharged to neutral atoms or radicals. These are the primary electrode reactions, of which the deposition of silver on a platinum cathode in the silver coulometer is a typical example."

"When his faculties were fading fast, he would sit long at the western window, watching the glories of the sunset; and one day, when his wife drew his attention to a beautiful rainbow that spanned the sky, he looked beyond the falling shower and the many-colored arch, and observed, "He hath set his testimony in the heavens." On August 25, 1867, quietly, almost imperceptively, came the release. There was a philosopher less on earth, and a saint more in heaven."

"With the realization that electric currents make magnetic fields, people immediately suggested that, somehow or other, magnets might also make electric fields. Various experiments were tried. For example, two wires were placed parallel to each other and a current was passed through one of them in the hope of finding a current in the other. The thought was that the magnetic field might in some way drag the electrons along in the second wire, giving some such law as "likes prefer to move alike." With the largest available current and the most sensitive galvanometer to detect any current, the result was negative. Large magnets next to wires also produced no observed effects. Finally, Faraday discovered in 1840 the essential feature that had been missed—that electric effects exist only when there is something changing. If one of a pair of wires has a changing current, a current is induced in the other, or if a magnet is moved near an electric circuit, there is a current. We say that currents are induced. This was the induction effect discovered by Faraday. It transformed the rather dull subject of static fields into a very exciting dynamic subject with an enormous range of wonderful phenomena."

"Would Faraday have discovered the law of electromagnetic induction if he had received a regular college education?"

"If the idea of physical reality had ceased to be purely atomic, it still remained for the time being purely mechanistic; people still tried to explain all events as the motion of inert masses; indeed no other way of looking at things seemed conceivable. Then came the great change, which will be associated for all time with the names of Faraday, Clerk Maxwell, and Hertz."

"Faraday was the first scientist to realise the enormous importance of the electromagnetic field. He saw in it a reality of a new category differing from matter. It was capable of transmitting effects from place to place, and was not to be likened to a mere mathematical fiction such as the gravitational field was then assumed to be. In his opinion, the phenomena of electricity and magnetism should be approached via the field rather than via the charged bodies and currents. In other words, according to Faraday, when a current was flowing along a wire, the most important aspect of the phenomenon lay not in the current itself but in the fields of electric and magnetic force distributed throughout space in the current's vicinity. It is this elevation of the field to a position of preeminence that is often called the pure physics of the field. Faraday was not a mathematician and was unable to co-ordinate the phenomena he foresaw in a mathematical way, and derive the full benefit from his ideas. Before dying, however, he entrusted this task to his colleague Maxwell; and one of the most astonishing theories of science, eclipsed only in recent years by Einstein's theory of relativity, was the outcome."

"Faraday found no conflict between his religious beliefs and his activities as a scientist and philosopher. He viewed his discoveries of nature's laws as part of the continual process of "reading the book of nature", no different in principle from the process of reading the Bible to discover God's laws. A strong sense of the unity of God and nature pervaded Faraday's life and work."

"An intimate friend of Faraday once described to me how, when Faraday was endeavouring to explain to Gladstone and several others an important new discovery in science Gladstone's only commentary was “but, after all, what use is it?” “Why, sir,” replied Faraday, “there is every probability that you will soon be able to tax it!”"

"I shall be with Christ, and that is enough."

"Whereas, according to the declaration of that true man of the world Talleyrand, the use of language is to conceal the thoughts; this is to declare in the present instance, when I say I am not able to bear much talking, it means really, and without any mistake, or equivocation, or oblique meaning, or implication, or subterfuge, or omission, that I am not able; being at present rather weak in the head, and able to work no more."

"As when on some secluded branch in forest far and wide sits perched an owl, who, full of self-conceit and self-created wisdom, explains, comments, condemns, ordains and order things not understood, yet full of importance still holds forth to stocks and stones around — so sits and scribbles Mike."

"The lecturer should give the audience full reason to believe that all his powers have been exerted for their pleasure and instruction."

"The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."

"Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."

"The secret is comprised in three words — Work, Finish, Publish."

"I am, I hope, very thankful that in the withdrawal of the powers and things of life, the good hope is left with me, which makes the contemplation of death a comfort — not a fear. Such peace is alone the gift of God, and as it is He who gives it, why should we be afraid? His unspeakable gift in His beloved Son is the ground of no doubtful hope, and there is the rest for those who (like you and me) are drawing near the latter end of our terms here below. I do not know, however why I should join you with me in years. I forget your age, but this I know (and feel as well) that next Sabbath day (the 22nd) I shall complete my 70th year. I can hardly think myself so old as I write to you — so much of cheerful spirit, ease and general health is left to me, and if my memory fails, why it causes that I forget troubles as well as pleasure and the end is, I am happy and content."

"No wonder that my remembrance fails me, for I shall complete my 70 years next Sunday (the 22); — and during these 70 years I have had a happy life; which still remains happy because of hope and content."

"There is no more open door by which you can enter into the study of natural philosophy than by considering the physical phenomena of a candle."

"Bacon in his instruction tells us that the scientific student ought not to be as the ant, who gathers merely, nor as the spider who spins from her own bowels, but rather as the bee who both gathers and produces. All this is true of the teaching afforded by any part of physical science. Electricity is often called wonderful, beautiful; but it is so only in common with the other forces of nature. The beauty of electricity or of any other force is not that the power is mysterious, and unexpected, touching every sense at unawares in turn, but that it is under law, and that the taught intellect can even now govern it largely. The human mind is placed above, and not beneath it, and it is in such a point of view that the mental education afforded by science is rendered super-eminent in dignity, in practical application and utility; for by enabling the mind to apply the natural power through law, it conveys the gifts of God to man."

"We learn by such results as these, what is the kind of education that science offers to man. It teaches us to be neglectful of nothing, not to despise the small beginnings — they precede of necessity all great things. Vesicles make clouds; they are trifles light as air, but then they make drops, and drops make showers, rain makes torrents and rivers, and these can alter the face of a country, and even keep the ocean to its proper fulness and use. It teaches a continual comparison of the small and great, and that under differences almost approaching the infinite, for the small as often contains the great in principle, as the great does the small; and thus the mind becomes comprehensive. It teaches to deduce principles carefully, to hold them firmly, or to suspend the judgment, to discover and obey law, and by it to be bold in applying to the greatest what we know of the smallest. It teaches us first by tutors and books, to learn that which is already known to others, and then by the light and methods which belong to science to learn for ourselves and for others; so making a fruitful return to man in the future for that which we have obtained from the men of the past."

"I am no poet, but if you think for yourselves, as I proceed, the facts will form a poem in your minds."

"I have not been at work except in turning the tables upon table turners – nor should I have done that but that so many enquiries poured in upon me that I thought it better to stop the inpouring flood by letting all know at once what my views and thoughts were. What a weak credulous, incredulous, unbelieving superstitious, bold, frightened, what a ridiculous world ours is, as far as concerns the mind of man. How full of inconsistencies, contradictions and absurdities it is. I declare that taking the average of many minds that have recently come before me (and apart from that spirit which God has placed in each) and accepting for a moment that average as a standard, I should far prefer the obedience affections and instinct of a dog before it. Do not whisper this however to others. There is one above who worketh in all things and who governs even in the midst of that misrule to which the tendencies and powers of man are so easily perverted."

"Even in physics, there is no infallible procedure for generating reliable knowledge. The calm order and perfection of well-established theories, accredited by innumerable items of evidence from a thousand different hands, eyes and brains, is not characteristic of the front-line of research, where controversy, conjecture, contradiction and confusion are rife. The physics of undergraduate text-books is 90% true; the contents of the primary research journals of physics is 90% false. The scientific system is as much involved in distilling the former out of the latter as it is in creating and transferring more and more bits of data and items of 'information'."

"Ethics is not just an abstract intellectual discipline. It is about the conflicts that arise in trying to meet real human needs and values."

"The communication of modern science to the ordinary citizen, necessary, important, desirable as it is, cannot be considered an easy task. The prime obstacle is lack of education. … There is also the difficulty of making scientific discoveries interesting and exciting without completely degrading them intellectually. … It is a weakness of modern science that the scientist shrinks from this sort of publicity, and thus gives an impression of arrogant mystagoguery."

"A new scientific theory is seldom stated with such clarity by its original author, and usually takes many years to creep into public conciousness."

"...the 'size' of science has doubled steadily every 15 years. In a century this means a factor of 100. For every single scientific paper or for every single scientist in 1670, there were 100 in 1770, 10,000 in 1870 and 1,000,000 in 1970."

"What I may attempt is to dispel the feeling that in using the eye of the body or the eye of the soul, and incorporating what is thereby revealed in our conception of reality, we are doing something irrational and disobeying the leading of truth which as scientists we are pledged to serve."

"Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine."

"With regard to the Newtonian concept of absolute rotation, Eddington admitted that Einstein's plenum does in fact provide a world-wide inertial frame, with respect to which it can be measured. Nevertheless, Eddington believed that Einstein attributed too important a role to matter, for in his universe it appears that not only the metrical properties, as in General Relativity, but the very existence of space depends on the existence of matter. Eddington preferred to regard matter as a manifestation of the "structure" of space-time."

"The solution … was found only after the rise of nuclear physics, and, strange to relate, was not known to Eddington when he developed his celebrated theory of stellar structure between 1916 and 1924. Indeed, it is one of the most intriguing facts in the history of science that the two most influential theories concerning the stars — Newton's theory of gravitation and Eddington's theory of stellar construction — were each developed so successfully although Newton was ignorant of the origin of gravitation and Eddington of the origin of stellar energy."

"The best presentation of the general theory [of relativity] is still Eddington's book of 1923, The Mathematical Theory of Relativity. … The mathematical foundation, the calculus of tensors, is given very completely in Eddington's book. For an exhaustive treatment see: Levi-Cevita, The Absolute Differential Calculus, translated by Dr. E. Perisco (1927)."

"Our sense experience has to be supplemented by all kinds of images and formulas to tell us much about the outer world, just as we learn something about the nonphysical one from mythical images tested out in experience. Arthur Eddington has discussed at length the strange way that man receives his knowledge of the physical world in Science and the Unseen World. Mythological thinking is not as strange as some people think once they begin to see the total universe as it is."

"The equations of gravitation … signify that whenever we recognise the existence of one of these physical magnitudes it is always accompanied by corresponding curvatures of space-time. It is usual to assume that the curvatures are produced by those concrete somethings which we call mass, momentum, energy, pressure. In this way, we must concede a duality to nature; there would exist both matter and space-time, or, better still, matter and the metrical field of space-time. Einstein … attempted to remove this duality by proving that it was possible to attribute the entire existence of the metrical field, hence of space-time, to the presence of matter. This attitude led to a matter-moulding conception of the universe … And … only when this attitude was adhered to could Mach's belief in the relativity of all motion be accepted. Eddington's attitude is just the reverse. He prefers to assume that the equations of gravitation are not equations in the ordinary sense of something being equal to something else. In his opinion they are identities. They merely tell us how our senses will recognize the existence of certain curvatures of space-time by interpreting them as matter, motion, and so on. In other words, there is no matter; there is nothing but a variable curvature of space-time. Matter, momentum, vis viva, are the names we give to those curvatures on account of the varying ways they affect our senses."

"One of the foremost scientists, not only of the 20th Century, but of the entire history of the human species. His achievements include, but are not limited to, the integration of modern astrophysics, major advances in the early history of relativistic cosmology, major additions to modern astronomical advancements, a superior exposition of the philosophy of physical science, and authorship of many books and articles making science more meaningful, not only to scientists, but to all rational and curious individuals. His achievements will radiate for the duration of the human species!"

"The mathematics is not there till we put it there."

"Let us suppose that an ichthyologist is exploring the life of the ocean. He casts a net into the water and brings up a fishy assortment. Surveying his catch, he proceeds in the usual manner of a scientist to systematise what it reveals. He arrives at two generalisations: No sea-creature is less than two inches long. (2) All sea-creatures have gills. These are both true of his catch, and he assumes tentatively that they will remain true however often he repeats it. In applying this analogy, the catch stands for the body of knowledge which constitutes physical science, and the net for the sensory and intellectual equipment which we use in obtaining it. The casting of the net corresponds to observation; for knowledge which has not been or could not be obtained by observation is not admitted into physical science. An onlooker may object that the first generalisation is wrong. "There are plenty of sea-creatures under two inches long, only your net is not adapted to catch them." The icthyologist dismisses this objection contemptuously. "Anything uncatchable by my net is ipso facto outside the scope of icthyological knowledge. In short, what my net can't catch isn't fish." Or — to translate the analogy — "If you are not simply guessing, you are claiming a knowledge of the physical universe discovered in some other way than by the methods of physical science, and admittedly unverifiable by such methods. You are a metaphysician. Bah!""

"For the truth of the conclusions of physical science, observation is the supreme Court of Appeal. It does not follow that every item which we confidently accept as physical knowledge has actually been certified by the Court; our confidence is that it would be certified by the Court if it were submitted. But it does follow that every item of physical knowledge is of a form which might be submitted to the Court. It must be such that we can specify (although it may be impracticable to carry out) an observational procedure which would decide whether it is true or not. Clearly a statement cannot be tested by observation unless it is an assertion about the results of observation. Every item of physical knowledge must therefore be an assertion of what has been or would be the result of carrying out a specified observational procedure."

"All change is relative. The universe is expanding relatively to our common material standards; our material standards are shrinking relatively to the size of the universe. The theory of the "expanding universe" might also be called the theory of the "shrinking atom". […] Let us then take the whole universe as our standard of constancy, and adopt the view of a cosmic being whose body is composed of intergalactic spaces and swells as they swell. Or rather we must now say it keeps the same size, for he will not admit that it is he who has changed. Watching us for a few thousand million years, he sees us shrinking; atoms, animals, planets, even the galaxies, all shrink alike; only the intergalactic spaces remain the same. The earth spirals round the sun in an ever‑decreasing orbit. It would be absurd to treat its changing revolution as a constant unit of time. The cosmic being will naturally relate his units of length and time so that the velocity of light remains constant. Our years will then decrease in geometrical progression in the cosmic scale of time. On that scale man's life is becoming briefer; his threescore years and ten are an ever‑decreasing allowance. Owing to the property of geometrical progressions an infinite number of our years will add up to a finite cosmic time; so that what we should call the end of eternity is an ordinary finite date in the cosmic calendar. But on that date the universe has expanded to infinity in our reckoning, and we have shrunk to nothing in the reckoning of the cosmic being. We walk the stage of life, performers of a drama for the benefit of the cosmic spectator. As the scenes proceed he notices that the actors are growing smaller and the action quicker. When the last act opens the curtain rises on midget actors rushing through their parts at frantic speed. Smaller and smaller. Faster and faster. One last microscopic blurr of intense agitation. And then nothing."

"Accordingly the primordial state of things which I picture is an even distribution of protons and electrons, extremely diffuse and filling all (spherical) space, remaining nearly balanced for an exceedingly long time until its inherent instability prevails. We shall see later that the density of this distribution can be calculated; it was about one proton and electron per litre. There is no hurry for anything to begin to happen. But at last small irregular tendencies accumulate, and evolution gets under way. The first stage is the formation of condensations ultimately to become the galaxies; this, as we have seen, started off an expansion, which then automatically increased in speed until it is now manifested to us in the recession of the spiral nebulae."

"If our so-called facts are changing shadows, they are shadows cast by the light of constant truth. So too in religion we are repelled by that confident theological doctrine … but we need not turn aside from the measure of light that comes into our experience showing us a Way through the unseen world."

"You will understand the true spirit neither of science nor of religion unless seeking is placed in the forefront."

"It is perhaps difficult sufficiently to emphasise Seeking without disparaging its correlative Finding. But I must risk this, for Finding has a clamorous voice that proclaims its own importance; it is definite and assured, something that we can take hold of — that is what we all want, or think we want. Yet how transitory it proves. The finding of one generation will not serve for the next. It tarnishes rapidly except it be reserved with an ever-renewed spirit of seeking."

"If the kind of controversy which so often springs up between modernism and traditionalism in religion were applied to more commonplace affairs of life we might see some strange results. … It arises, let us say, from a passage in an obituary notice which mentions that the deceased had loved to watch the sunsets from his peaceful country home.. … it is forgotten that what the deceased man looked out for each evening was an experience and not a creed."

"Science has an important part to play in our everyday existence, and there is far too much neglect of science; but its intention is to supplement not to supplant the familiar outlook."

"We have to build the spiritual world out of symbols taken from our own personality, as we build the scientific world out of the symbols of the mathematician."