Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/279

Rh and mechanism. But I shall be true to my earlier promise and spare you a discussion so recondite as would be one that should undertake to establish this distinction.

What I am going to try to do is to show, briefly, that materialism held down to its legitimate meaning and made a general theory of the world is a form of scientific sophistication; and then especially, to insist that natural history is the natural antidote and prophylactic against such sophistication.

A young mathematical physicist, who I hear is highly regarded among his fellow workmen, tells me that one of the "fathers in Israel" of their science declares that physics is bankrupt to-day. Now I should not take this declaration, by itself, very seriously. Of the bankruptcy of science as a whole, and of particular branches of science, we hear rather frequently. But from some of the things this young friend tells me, and from what I gather from other sources—by conversation and the reading I am able to do along the edges of the domain of physics—I am led to suspect that there are conditions within that domain which justify considerable solicitude for the health of that science. My young friend's epigrammatic way of stating the situation is this: All nature reduces itself to matter, all matter to electrons, all electrons to ether, and all ether to a hypothesis.

Only a few days ago I heard a physical chemist making a sharp distinction between what he called the "world of fact," the world of common sense, and as he put it, "the world with which science deals." I submit that if such statements coming from within the portals of the physicochemical realm are to be taken seriously, if science as understood within that realm is not dealing with facts, then indeed are outsiders justified in taking seriously also the ex-cathedra statement about the bankruptcy of this science.,

If then there really is cause for solicitude as to the solvency of physics—if it has used its credit (its speculations) well up to the limit of its assets (its facts), how has it come to do this, and how might it get back to a safe business basis?

Should any one question the right of biology, which science I represent, to inquire into the internal affairs of physics, the reply is that biology has heavy investments in physics both as depositor and stockholder, and so has not only the right but the duty to be informed as to physics' solvency or insolvency.

I believe physics and chemistry for years. have been and now are violating certain principles fundamental and common to the right interpretation of nature in all its subdivisions. To return to the banking simile, these sciences have, unwittingly and unintentionally, invested their funds in inadequately protected securities. This I understand is a grave charge, and any one who should make it without being able to