Quote#Truth
The things to be investigated are either true or false. If false,…
Quote byOliver Lodge · 1851–1940
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Raymond, or Life and Death (1916), Raymond, p. 373.
English (original)
The things to be investigated are either true or false. If false, pertinacious inquiry will reveal their falsity. If true, they are profoundly important. For there are no half-truths in Nature; every smallest departure has portentous consequences; our eyes must open slowly, or we should be overwhelmed.
— Oliver Lodge
More from Oliver Lodge
Motion and force are our primary objects of experience and consciousness; and in terms of them all other less familiar occurrences may conceivably be studied and grasped.
A body can only act immediately on what it is in contact with; it must be by the action of contiguous particles—that is, practically, through a continuous medium, that force can be transmitted across space.
What properties are essential to a medium capable of transmitting wave motion? Roughly, we may say two: elasticity and inertia.
The waves of light are not anything mechanical or material, but are something electrical and magnetic—they are, in fact, electrical disturbances periodic in space and time, and travelling with a known and tremendous speed through the ether …
The oldest and best known function for an ether is the conveyance of light, and hence the name "luminiferous" was applied to it, though at the present day many functions are known, and more will almost certainly be discovered.
All potential energy exists in the ether. It may vibrate, and it may rotate, but as regards locomotion it is stationary—the most stationary body we know: absolutely stationary, so to speak; our standard of rest.