The so-called ether is merely a collective name to designate a group of force and energy activities occurring in space. [1]
Primordial-force behavior does give rise to phenomena which are in many ways analogous to your postulated ether. Space is not empty; the spheres of all space whirl and plunge on through a vast ocean of outspread force-energy; neither is the space content of an atom empty. Nevertheless there is no ether, and the very absence of this hypothetical ether enables the inhabited planet to escape falling into the sun and the encircling electron to resist falling into the nucleus. [2] Light is a real substance, not simply waves of hypothetical ether. [3]
Not all the suppositions of natural philosophy are valid; for example, the hypothetical ether, which represents an ingenious attempt of man to unify his ignorance of space phenomena. [4]
The Unqualified Absolute is not an undifferentiated and all-pervading influence comparable either to the pantheistic concepts of metaphysics or to the sometime ether hypothesis of science. [5]