"The gradual reception of the undulatory theory of light necessitated the assumption of the existence of an 'ether' filling all space. But whether this ether was to be regarded as a strictly material and continuous substance was an undecided point, and hence the revived atomism escaped strangling in its birth. For it is clear, that if the ether is admitted to be a continuous material substance, Democritic atomism is at an end and Cartesian continuity takes its place."
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Thomas Henry Huxley, The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century (1889)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Luminiferous_aether
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Luminiferous aether
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