ether

• influence of Unqualified Absolute not comparable to

0:11.9We are con­vinced that the Un­qual­i­fied Ab­so­lute is not an un­dif­fer­en­ti­ated and all-per­vad­ing in­flu­ence com­pa­ra­ble ei­ther to the pan­the­is­tic con­cepts of meta­physics or to the some­time ether hy­poth­e­sis of sci­ence. The Un­qual­i­fied Ab­so­lute is force un­lim­ited and De­ity con­di­tioned, but we do not fully per­ceive the re­la­tion of this Ab­so­lute to the spirit re­al­i­ties of the uni­verses.

• hypothetical

15:6.13Many comets are un­estab­lished wild off­spring of the so­lar mother wheels, which are be­ing grad­u­ally brought un­der con­trol of the cen­tral gov­ern­ing sun. Comets also have nu­mer­ous other ori­gins. A comet’s tail points away from the at­tract­ing body or sun be­cause of the elec­tri­cal re­ac­tion of its highly ex­panded gases and be­cause of the ac­tual pres­sure of light and other en­er­gies em­a­nat­ing from the sun. This phe­nom­e­non con­sti­tutes one of the pos­i­tive proofs of the re­al­ity of light and its as­so­ci­ated en­er­gies; it demon­strates that light has weight. Light is a real sub­stance, not sim­ply waves of hy­po­thet­i­cal ether.

• name for energy activities in space; does not exist

42:5.14The so-called ether is merely a col­lec­tive name to des­ig­nate a group of force and en­ergy ac­tiv­i­ties oc­cur­ring in space. Ul­ti­ma­tons, elec­trons, and other mass ag­gre­ga­tions of en­ergy are uni­form par­ti­cles of mat­ter, and in their tran­sit through space they re­ally pro­ceed in di­rect lines. Light and all other forms of rec­og­niz­able en­ergy man­i­fes­ta­tions con­sist of a suc­ces­sion of def­i­nite en­ergy par­ti­cles which pro­ceed in di­rect lines ex­cept as mod­i­fied by grav­ity and other in­ter­ven­ing forces. That these pro­ces­sions of en­ergy par­ti­cles ap­pear as wave phe­nom­ena when sub­jected to cer­tain ob­ser­va­tions is due to the re­sis­tance of the un­dif­fer­en­ti­ated force blan­ket of all space, the hy­po­thet­i­cal ether, and to the in­ter­grav­ity ten­sion of the as­so­ci­ated ag­gre­ga­tions of mat­ter. The spac­ing of the par­ti­cle-in­ter­vals of mat­ter, to­gether with the ini­tial ve­loc­ity of the en­ergy beams, es­tab­lishes the un­du­la­tory ap­pear­ance of many forms of en­ergy-mat­ter.

42:5.15The ex­ci­ta­tion of the con­tent of space pro­duces a wave­like re­ac­tion to the pas­sage of rapidly mov­ing par­ti­cles of mat­ter, just as the pas­sage of a ship through wa­ter ini­ti­ates waves of vary­ing am­pli­tude and in­ter­val.

• if e. existed, planets would fall into sun

42:5.16Pri­mor­dial-force be­hav­ior does give rise to phe­nom­ena which are in many ways anal­o­gous to your pos­tu­lated ether. Space is not empty; the spheres of all space whirl and plunge on through a vast ocean of out­spread force-en­ergy; nei­ther is the space con­tent of an atom empty. Nev­er­the­less there is no ether, and the very ab­sence of this hy­po­thet­i­cal ether en­ables the in­hab­ited planet to es­cape falling into the sun and the en­cir­cling elec­tron to re­sist falling into the nu­cleus.

• theory is ingenious attempt to unify ignorance

42:9.4But not all the sup­po­si­tions of nat­u­ral phi­los­o­phy are valid; for ex­am­ple, the hy­po­thet­i­cal ether, which rep­re­sents an in­ge­nious at­tempt of man to unify his ig­no­rance of space phe­nom­ena. The phi­los­o­phy of the uni­verse can­not be pred­i­cated on the ob­ser­va­tions of so-called sci­ence. If such a meta­mor­pho­sis could not be seen, a sci­en­tist would be in­clined to deny the pos­si­bil­ity of de­vel­op­ing a but­ter­fly out of a cater­pil­lar.