Religion and Science
5. Religion and Science
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century, when Laplace was emboldened to
affirm that a sufficiently great mathematician,
given the distribution of the particles in the
primitive nebula, could predict the whole
future history of the world. The fundamental
concepts isolated by Newton had proved
themselves so adequate in the applications
that had been made of them that they were
regarded as the key to everything.
The first indication that the Newtonian
concepts were not all-sufficient came when
men tried to fashion a mechanical theory of
light. This endeavour led to the creation of the
ether, the most unsatisfactory and wasteful
product of human ingenuity that science has
to show. For generations this monster was
elaborated.
Miracles
of
mathematical
ingenuity were performed in the attempt to
account for the properties of light in terms of
the Newtonian concepts. The difficulties
became ever more heartbreaking until, after
the publication of Maxwell’s demonstration
that light is an electromagnetic phenomenon,
they seemed to become insuperable. For it had
