However, the Mechanical School also inherited “the fanaticism that reduces everything to mechanical motion.”1 In 1847 Helmholtz asserted, “We eventually find that all questions related to physics can be reduced to gravitation and repulsion…The mission of physics ends with the simplification of all natural phenomena into force. ”2 On the one hand, Maxwell shook the belief that mechanics is the ultimate foundation of all physics with the theory of electromagnetism. On the other hand, they tried every means to stuff their theory into the framework of mechanics.
By the end of the nineteenth century, experimental evidence, such as Michelson’s experiment, the specific heat of polyatomic gases and solids, the photoelectric effect, black body radiation, atomic spectra, and particularly the discovery and research on radiation after 1895, had profoundly shaken the whole foundation of physics. Nevertheless, the Mechanical School still cherished the basic concepts and principles of classical theory within the “treasure box” of “absolutes,” claiming that they are an unalterable “sacred heritage.”3
The celebrated Kelvin was keenly interested in the construction of mechanical models of the ether. In 1884 he proclaimed, “I never satisfy myself until I can make a mechanical model of a thing.”4 In 1890, he suggested that electrical effects are caused by the translational movement of ether, that magnetic phenomena can be explained by the rotation of ether, and that light is the result of wavy vibrations within the ether. In 1907, in the last public appearance before his death, he still supported the view that every cubic millimeter in space contains a thousand tons of ether mass. Kelvin was often suspicious of new discoveries and theories in physics and was particularly opposed to the theory of the transmutation of elements. In August of 1906, at the age of 82, he stubbornly insisted that radium originally contains helium and therefore the production of helium from radium cannot justify the theory of the transmutation of elements, a theory cleverly fabricated solely for the purpose of explaining the properties of radium. He also attributed the energy of the sun to gravity, opposing explanations which referred to transmutation.
Although Lorentz actively participated in frontier research in several areas of physics at the turn of the century, he tried very hard to revise old theories and to mediate between mechanics and electrodynamics without violating the framework of classical theories. However, Michelson’s 1887 experiment rejected Fresnel’s stationary ether theory, a prerequisite of electromagnetic theory, thus attacking its mechanical foundation. Lorentz was upset and gloomy, writing in a letter to Rayleigh in 1892, “I simply don’t know how to get rid of this contradiction, but I still believe that if we have to discard Fresnel’s theory,…we will never have an appropriate theory.”5 In the same year, he proposed the contraction hypothesis to resolve the dilemma. In 1904, following Poincare’s suggestion, he obtained the law of corresponding states applicable to effects at all orders and introduced the mathematical transformations which are named after him. Lorentz’s theory was very similar in mathematical form to the special theory of relativity, but it differed fundamentally in physical explanation, lacking a thorough redefinition of traditional concepts of space and time. Even in his later years, Lorentz continued to believe that the ether concept possesses certain advantages. M. Born recalled, “when I visited Lorentz several years before he died, his suspicion of relativity remained unchanged.”6 According to S.Sakata’s recollection, Lorentz, facing the new concept of waveparticle duality, despairingly lamented,
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