celestial observations
This suggests that Walton implicitly recognizes the third element, after
electricity and magnetism, in what would in the
twentieth century be called a "grand unified field theory,"
gravitation.
That a unified field theorem is a still unrealized ideal of experimental
physics, one that has excited the ambitions of major scientific minds in
all quarters of the world, may indicate the seriousness of the scientific
issues and passions underlying Mary Shelley's novel. Without denigrating
those ambitions here, she characteristically reminds us of human
limitations in Walton's inability to recognize that in a land of eternal
light, as he imagines the pole might be, celestial observations would be
impossible.
