The Rejection of Aether in Physics

Abstract

Eelco Runia’s view of historical time is that the now and the past exert an alternating influence on each other. The most prominent expression of this is a dialogue between the historian and the historical actors in which the historian creates metonyms, replacement terms, for how historical actors are defined, which affects the description of the past. In this paper, Runia’s conception of historical time has been tested through an empirical investigation into the changing descriptions of the process of rejecting the aether hypothesis, 1858-2022. After the process of phasing the aether out of physics had previously been explained as being caused by the gradual acceptance of the theory of relativity, the cause was suddenly superseded in the 1990s by the Michelson-Morley experiment conducted in the 1880s. During the 21st century, however, the aether once again returned as a concept. The reason for the changes, is the conclusion, could possibly be due to the ambition to give a rational picture of the development of natural science at every point in time