Killed by its own obituaries - Explaining the demise of the ether

Aug 28, 2026

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The paper traces the decline of the ether in the first half of the twentieth century, showing how early “obituaries” helped construct a new object with streamlined properties that both related to, and differed from, nineteenth-century ethers. It argues that writing histories of “dead” objects is not epistemologically neutral, because it reformulates what the object is. Critics of the ether often treated its role as the seat of electromagnetic-wave transmission as irrelevant, emphasizing other internal contradictions instead.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages17

Reading Time43 min

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Introduction

Ether as a concept and as a word

Attempts to resuscitate the ether

Obituaries and historical reformulation

Science in Context (2021), 34, 209–225 doi:10.1017/S0269889722000175 RESEARCH ARTICLE Killed by its own obituaries: Explaining the demise of the ether Jaume Navarro University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) and Ikerbasque, Basque Foundation for Research [Email:](Email: jaume.navarro@ehu.es)[ jaume.navarro@ehu.es](Email: jaume.navarro@ehu.es) Argument In this paper I follow the demise of the ether in the first half of the twentieth century to show how the first obituaries of the ether were instrumental in creating an object with specific and largely simplified properties related to, but different from, nineteenth-century ethers. I suggest that writing the history of dead objects (or objects an author wants to be dead) is not epistemologically neutral but, on the contrary, it involves a reformulation of the object itself. I show that this was indeed the case with the ether: those arguing for its demise in the early twentieth century tended to overlook as irrelevant one of the ether’s most important properties, namely being the seat for the transmission of electromagnetic waves. Instead, they emphasized the contradictions between other properties of previous ether(s), so as to advocate for its disappearance. Keywords: Ether; epistemic objects; Einstein; Lodge; Eddington; obituaries; historical epistemology 1. Introduction Reflecting on the depressing situation of his worlds, Victor Jakob, the fictional German physics professor and protagonist of Russell McCormmach’s novel, Night Thoughts of a Classical Physicist, regrets Einstein’s dismissal of the ether as superfluous.“What became of Drude’s favourite expression physics of the ether?,” he asks, arguing that the ether “conceptually unified” all that was known in physics, and without it “physics threatened to become chaos”—a chaos similar to that which Europe had experienced in the Great War (McCormmach 1982, 102) . He notes that Drude and others seemed happy to jump on the bandwagon, since they “had long conceded that one could get on with physics by doing away with the word ether and speaking instead of the physical properties of space,” but adds that, in his opinion, this linguistic trick “didn’t change anything” (Ibid. Emphasis in the original). Jakob’s night thoughts picture a process of transformation of the ether from being a concept or, more precisely, a tool for conceptual unity, to the ether as a word, simply a name, that could be substituted by expressions such as “physical properties of space.” And this looked to him like an unfair nominalist stratagem. If Jakob had been right, and following his line of thought, the same trick could be used to bring the word “ether” back to use in contemporary physics. And some scientists have indeed tried, particularly in the field of cosmology (Kragh 2012; Kragh & Overduin 2014, ch. 2) . For instance, the physicist and Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek argued that most twentieth-century developmentsin quantum field theories had never really done away with the ether, if only because they were based on the notion of fields; and yet the actual word—ether—was seldom used, because “quite undeservedly, the ether has acquired a bad name”(Wilczek 1999, 11) . Half a century earlier, and presenting a new theory of gravitation, American astrophysicist and cosmologist Robert H. Dicke also regretted the abandonment of the word ether, arguing that “with empty space having so many © The Author(s), 2022 . Published by Cambridge University Press. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence ([https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. [https://doi.org/10.1017/S0269889722000175](https://doi.org/10.1017/S0269889722000175) Published online by Cambridge University Press 210 Jaume Navarro properties

FAQs

What does the paper claim about “obituaries” of the ether?

It argues that early obituaries were instrumental in creating an ether-object with specific, largely simplified properties, distinct from nineteenth-century ethers.

Why is writing the history of a “dead” object described as non-neutral?

Because such writing reformulates the object itself rather than merely describing it, shaping what counts as its relevant properties.

Which ether property does the paper say early twentieth-century critics tended to overlook?

They often overlooked the ether’s role as the seat for the transmission of electromagnetic waves.

Aug 28, 2026

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