Matter, Ether and Motion - The Factors and Relations of Physical Science

In the past fifty years the advance in physical knowledge has not only been rapid, but it has been revolutionary. The fundamental principles of natural philosophy that were applied by Sir Isaac Newton and others to masses of visible magnitude have been applied to molecules; and it has thus been discovered that all kinds of phenomena are subject to the same mechanical laws. It was thought before that physics embraced several distinct provinces of knowledge which were not necessarily related ...