Putting Nature to the Question

F. Bacon announced the fundamental principle of science when he said that it consists in putting Nature to the question. He emphasized, in other words, the importance of learning from experiment instead of trusting to argument. In physics, observation and experiment have been employed for many years in an attempt to discover more about the nature of matter and of the physical universe in general. In 1867, William Thomson put forward the theory that the atom is a structure in the aether (the medium which the undulatory theory made necessary) of the nature of a vortex ring. The fundamental principle of science had been applied—that of putting Nature to the question; and Nature had replied in perfectly clear terms, by endorsing the existence of the aether. Mr. Hoyle, in his summing up, turns to the question of what light the latest discoveries in astronomy throw on the nature of man and the human situation.