An introduction to mathematics, by A. N. Whitehead.

METHODS OF APPLICATION 35
of electricity. Faraday also reorganized the
whole theoretical conception of the science.
His ideas, which had not been fully understood by the scientific world, were extended
and put into a directly mathematical form by
Clerk Maxwell in 1873. As a result of his
mathematical investigations, Maxwell recognized that, under certain conditions, electrical
vibrations ought to be propagated. He at
once suggested that the vibrations which
form light are electrical. This suggestion has
since been verified, so that now the whole
theory of light is nothing but a branch of the
great science of electricity. Also Herz, a
German, in 1888, following on Maxwell's
ideas, succeeded in producing electric vibrations by direct electrical methods. His
experiments are the basis of our wireless
telegraphy.
In more recent years even more fundamental discoveries have been made, and the
science continues to grow in theoretic importance and in practical interest. This rapid
sketch of its progress illustrates how, by the
gradual introduction of the relevant theoretic
ideas, suggested by experiment and themselves suggesting fresh experiments, a whole
mass of isolated and even trivial phenomena
are welded together into one coherent science,
in which the results of abstract mathematical
deductions, starting from a few simple as