“It must be admitted that among a certain number of advanced mathematical physicists whose work has lain mainly in the twentieth century, the ether is regarded with suspicion, or even with contempt. And some of the opponents go so far as to as to say that the nineteenth century idea of the ether has failed to establish itself, and that in consequence the whole idea of the ether is under a cloud, and that it is only upheld by a few antiquated supporters, who, though are willing to admit many modifications in the original nineteenth century notions of an ether, feel the need of a medium capable of performing the functions attributed to it.”

— Oliver Lodge

My Philosophy: Representing My Views on the Many Functions of the Ether of Space, p. 109 https://books.google.com/books?id=pC28TnExGEEC&pg=PA109
My Philosophy (1933)

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Oliver Lodge 19

British physicist 1851–1940

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“The physicist's concept of nothing—the vacuum… began as empty space—the void… turned into a stagnant ether through which all the motions of the Universe swam, vanished in Einstein's hands, then re-emerged in the twentieth-century quantum picture of how Nature works.”

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Source: The Book of Nothing (2009), chapter nought "Nothingology—Flying to Nowhere"

“I must admit that I am not a member of the ugly school. I have a great regard for certain notions of beauty even though to some it is an old fashioned idea.”

Saul Leiter (1923–2013) American photographer

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Context: I must admit that I am not a member of the ugly school. I have a great regard for certain notions of beauty even though to some it is an old fashioned idea. Some photographers think that by taking pictures of human misery, they are addressing a serious problem. I do not think that misery is more profound than happiness.

“…when the experiment was attempted by Michelson and Morley it failed, thus showing that space and time assumed in the picture were not true to the facts of nature. …the pattern of events was the same whether the world stood at rest in the supposed ether, or had an ether wind blowing through it at a million miles an hour. It began to look as though the supposed ether was not very important in the scheme of things… and so might as well be abandoned. But if the bell-rope is to be discarded, what is to ring the bell?”

James Jeans (1877–1946) British mathematician and astronomer

Physics and Philosophy (1942)

“Does the mathematical method proceed from particular to the general, and, if so, how can it be called deductive? …If we refuse to admit these consequences, it must be conceded that mathematical reasoning has of itself a sort of creative virtue and consequently differs from a syllogism.”

Henri Poincaré book Science and Hypothesis

Source: Science and Hypothesis (1901), Ch. I: On the Nature of Mathematical Reasoning (1905) Tr. https://books.google.com/books?id=5nQSAAAAYAAJ George Bruce Halstead
Context: The very possibility of the science of mathematics seems an insoluble contradiction. If this science is deductive only in appearance, whence does it derive that perfect rigor no one dreams of doubting? If, on the contrary, all the propositions it enunciates can be deduced one from another by the rules of formal logic, why is not mathematics reduced to an immense tautology? The syllogism can teach us nothing essentially new, and, if everything is to spring from the principle of identity, everything should be capable of being reduced to it. Shall we then admit that the enunciations of all those theorems which fill so many volumes are nothing but devious ways of saying A is A!... Does the mathematical method proceed from particular to the general, and, if so, how can it be called deductive?... If we refuse to admit these consequences, it must be conceded that mathematical reasoning has of itself a sort of creative virtue and consequently differs from a syllogism.<!--pp.5-6

“No nineteenth-century writer could have written this nineteenth-century tale; but few twentieth-century writers could have handled its simplicities in the way this one does.”

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (1896–1957) Sicilian writer and prince

Martin Seymour-Smith Guide to Modern World Literature (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1975) vol. 3, p. 30.
Criticism

“Do not imagine that mathematics is hard and crabbed, and repulsive to common sense. It is merely the etherealization of common sense.”

William Thomson (1824–1907) British physicist and engineer

Quoted in Life of Lord Kelvin (1910) by Silvanus Phillips Thompson

“All we know at present of locomotion is the locomotion of one piece of matter with reference to other pieces. That can be freely granted, and the whole edifice of physics is consistent with the idea that locomotion through the ether is impossible to measure. But the impossibility has never been proved, and some day an exceptional phenomenon may be found.”

Oliver Lodge (1851–1940) British physicist

My Philosophy, p. 125 https://books.google.com/books?id=pC28TnExGEEC&pg=PA115
My Philosophy (1933)

“I have said that mathematics is the oldest of the sciences; a glance at its more recent history will show that it has the energy of perpetual youth. The output of contributions to the advance of the science during the last century and more has been so enormous that it is difficult to say whether pride in the greatness of achievement in this subject, or despair at his inability to cope with the multiplicity of its detailed developments, should be the dominant feeling of the mathematician. Few people outside of the small circle of mathematical specialists have any idea of the vast growth of mathematical literature. The Royal Society Catalogue contains a list of nearly thirty-nine thousand papers on subjects of Pure Mathematics alone, which have appeared in seven hundred serials during the nineteenth century. This represents only a portion of the total output, the very large number of treatises, dissertations, and monographs published during the century being omitted.”

E. W. Hobson (1856–1933) British mathematician

Source: Presidential Address British Association for the Advancement of Science, Section A (1910), p. 283; Cited in: Moritz (1914, 108-9): Modern mathematics.

“The nineteenth century believed in science but the twentieth century does not.”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

Wars I Have Seen (1945)

“At this time, space was supposed to be filled with an ether, a substance which might well serve, among other functions, to transmit forces across space. So long as such an ether could be called on, the transmission of force to a distance was easy to understand; it was like ringing a distant bell by pulling a bell-rope.”

James Jeans (1877–1946) British mathematician and astronomer

Physics and Philosophy (1942)

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Oliver Lodge 19

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