Burnett Lectures, Second Course On Light as a Means of Investigation

Abstract

THE interest raised by the first series of these lectures is fully sustained by this second instalment, though the subject-matter is of a very different order. Then, the main question was the nature of light itself; now, we are led to deal chiefly with the uses of light as an instrument for indirect exploration. It is one of the most amazing results of modern science that the nature of mechanisms, too minute or too distant to be studied directly with the help of the microscope or the telescope, can be thus, in part at least, revealed to reason. This depends on the fact that a ray of light, like a human being, bears about with it indications alike of its origin and of its history; and can be made to tell whence it sprang and through what vicissitudes it has passed.

Burnett Lectures, Second Course. On Light as a Means of Investigation.

By G. G. Stokes. (London: Macmillan and Co., 1885.)