CHAPTER VII
RELATIVITY
In the previous lectures of this course we have considered the antecedent conditions which led up to the scientific movement, and have traced the progress of thought from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. In the nineteenth century this history falls into three parts, so far as it is to be grouped around science. These divisons are, the contact between the romantic movement and science, the development of technology and physics in the earlier part of the century, and lastly the theory of evolution combined with the general advance of the biological sciences.
The dominating note of the whole period of three centuries is that the doctrine of materialism afforded an adequate basis for the concepts of science. It was practically unquestioned. When undulations were wanted, an ether was supplied, in order to perform the duties of an undulatory material. To show the full assumption thus involved, I have sketched in outline an alternative doctrine of an organic theory of nature. In the last lecture it was pointed out that the biological developments, the doctrine of evolution, the doctrine of energy, and the molecular theories were rapidly undermining the adequacy of the orthodox materialism. But until the close of the century no one drew that conclusion. Materialism reigned supreme.
