2007-08-27 16:20:57 · 6 answers · asked by Anonymous in Science & Mathematics ➔ Physics
Ether is a class of organic compounds.
The luminiferous aether refers to a medium for the transmission of light, once believed to be necessary. There are actually a few modern theories considering the existence of something like that.
The word spirit has quite a few meanings. One refers to a volatile organic compound, of which ether is an example. Another refers to the fifth classical element, and was used to refer to the luminiferous aether.
The term spiritual would not be used in either context. It would refer to the part of man that isn't physical, or to a being with no physical manifestation, such as God, angels, or demons. some animists also use the term.
2007-08-27 20:39:46 · answer #1 · answered by Frank N 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
According to Aristotle, above the moon and the changeable earth was a substance called the aether, and it incompasses the divine bodies. Despite the word 'divine,' the distinction was scientific rather than religious. Lucan placed the 'ghosts of good men' at the boundary of air and aether and describes them as able to bear (or breathe) the lower aether. Apuleus describes 'middle spirits–betwixt the angelic and the human kind'–through which humans commune with gods and inhabit the region between the earth and the aether. The aether is where the gods reside. Milton mentions the usual four elements, fire, earth, air, and water, and adds the aether, which is above the other four and outside mortal experience.
The medievalists postulated something between body and soul that they called... "Spirit (or more often, the spirits)... The spirits were supposed to be just sufficiently material for them to act upon the body, but so very fine and attenuated that they coul be acted upon by the wholly immaterial soul. They were, putting it bluntly, to be like the aether of nineteenth century physics, which, for all I could ever learn of it, was to be and not to be matter"
2007-08-28 00:22:48 · answer #2 · answered by anobium625 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
There is no spiritual viewpoint to ether. It is either the compound CH3-O-CH3 or a hypothetical medium through which light was thought to travel. Its existance was disproved.
2007-08-27 23:27:01 · answer #3 · answered by cattbarf 7 · 2⤊ 0⤋
I love it when E.E. "Doc" Smith used to write about spaceships 'Blasting through the ether...'
It made it seem like there was something out there to grab ahold of, when in reality, there is nothing.
Sorta like religion.
(bet you didn't think I could tie in the 'spiritual' part, didya?)
2007-08-28 00:38:46 · answer #4 · answered by Faesson 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
They are quite different. While the ether hypothesis is wrong, the belief in spirits is not even wrong.
2007-08-28 00:23:24 · answer #5 · answered by Dr. R 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
All things exist on one of three planes of being: Physical plane, mental plane, etheric plane(spiritual plane)
2007-08-28 00:01:03 · answer #6 · answered by stedyedy 5 · 0⤊ 1⤋