Abstract
Today matter is universally regarded as composed of molecules. Though molecules cannot be discerned by human senses, they may be defined precisely as the smallest portions of a material to exhibit certain of its distinguishing properties, and much of the behavior of individual molecules is predicted satisfactorily by known physical laws. Molecules in their turn are regarded as composed of atoms; these, of nuclei and electrons; and nuclei themselves as composed of certain elementary particles. The behavior of the elementary particles has been reduced, so far, but to a partial subservience to theory. Whether they in their turn await analysis into still smaller corpuscles, remains for the future.
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Reference
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The only single work attempting even a major part of our subject is the book of A. Brill, Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die Mechanik raumerfüllender Massen, Leipzig & Berlin, 1909.
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Toupin, R. (1984). The Field Viewpoint in Classical Physics. In: An Idiot’s Fugitive Essays on Science. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-8185-3_2
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