Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 66.djvu/75

Rh internal temperature, the rigidity of the earth's body, the thermal conductivity of the earth's interior, the amount of the earth's shrinkage, the extent of lateral thrust in the formation of folded mountains and many others, indeed most others. There is need to deal with these problems notwithstanding the imperfection of the basal data, for in many cases these must long remain imperfect. Moreover, there is need to treat these problems tentatively to determine what fundamental facts are really needed, how these can best be secured, and with what precision they must be determined. Preliminary trial may save much tedious and expensive experimentation. It is as foolish to cultivate sterile soil in science as in agriculture, and preliminary tests may show that given soils are necessarily sterile. In many cases, all the needs of the problem may be met by a multiple series of assumptions covering the full range of a probable fact. In most cases it is easy to see that the value of a given fundamental factor can not range beyond certain extremes on either hand. If a series of values ranging from the one extreme to the other be used simultaneously in the inquiry, the full range of results dependent on this factor may be covered. In some inquiries this serves as well as if the exact truth were known, for whatever the assignable value, certain deductions Can not stand. In other cases, it will be shown that a very slight change in the value of the basal factor will wholly change the outcome, and hence that extremely accurate determinations must be made before any trustworthy solution can be reached. Expensive determinations in the first case are folly; very accurate determinations in the second are to be sought at any cost. Conclusions on imperfect data in the one case are perfectly safe; conclusions without precise determinations in the other are folly. It is to be hoped that, with the wider adoption of the method of multiple series, tables of serial determinations covering the data of the more vital phenomena of the earth-sciences will be constructed, as tables of physical constants now are.

In the method of multiple hypotheses, the members of the group are used simultaneously and are more or less mutually exclusive, or even antagonistic. Supplementary to this method is the use of a succession of hypotheses related genetically to one another. In this the results of an inquiry under the first hypothesis give rise to the assumptions of the succeeding hypothesis. The precise conclusions of the first inquiry are not made the assumptions of the second, for the process would then be little more than repetitive, but the revelations and intimations, perhaps the incongruities and incompatibilities of the first results beget, by their suggestiveness, the basis of the second. The latter is the offspring of the former, but between parent and offspring there is mutation with an evolutionary purpose. A cruder first attempt generates a more highly organized and specialized