59 Montague Square | Monday night | 7th Jan
My dear Tyndall,
I have been exceedingly gratified by the perusal of your paper.2 It surpassed the expectations raised by your note which accompanied it.3 You have most lucidly, & effectually brought forward your point—and I am surprised that you should have been able to pack so much into so limited a space. I cannot conceive that any one will have the slightest difficulty in following your chain of reasoning. To myself it is most beautiful and satisfactory, and I felicitate you very much upon having made so great an advance in the physical conception of the probable reactions between the ultimate particles of matter & the all-pervading ether. All such theories must, I take it, be accepted provisionally, but with the atomic theory of chemistry on the one hand, & the undulatory theory of physical optics on the other,4 you are indulging in no vain speculation, but, in the highest spirit of genius, utilizing & adopting what it finds, you show the harmony of both, and carry them onwards in a new combination, which confirms the probability of their individual truth; while it seems to project a bridge into the future history of science, of which it is impossible to predict, where the ultimate abutments on the other side will some day (& I think in your day) be found to rest.
Ever yours truly | W. F. Pollock
RI MS JT/1/P/251
This letter replies to 1756, and was written later the same day.
your paper: the draft of Tyndall (1861).
your note which accompanied it: letter 1756.
the atomic theory of chemistry on the one hand, & the undulatory theory of physical optics on the other: Pollock is drawing a comparison here between a particle and a wave theory for understanding physical processes. These Victorians would have had no problem with quantum mechanics and wave/particle duality.
Please cite as “Tyndall1757,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on