Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/280

76 it with unquestioned facts and the most painstaking argument ought to be looked upon as either a trifler, a charlatan or a well-intentioned incompetent. Since I do not court being listed under any of these heads I must state, as briefly as possible, the exact nature of the offense which, as I believe, physics has committed. Stated in the most general terms, it is against the natural history mode of viewing nature; or to carry the statement one step farther toward specificity, it consists in a violation of certain essential principles of observation, description, designation and classification which are so obviously the very foundation of the natural historian's "world." Or, expressed still more positively, physics has become over-mathematicized, and has concentrated its gaze too exclusively on a few attributes of what it calls matter, or substance. What I mean by being over-mathematicized is not that mathematics has been applied too widely or exactly to physico-chemical problems, but that the reasonings of pure mathematics, that is, mathematics as a purely subjective process and without reference to its application to objective reality, has been too exclusively relied on in the formulation of general theories. Not sufficient restraint in theorizing has been exercised, in view of the fact that the "probable error" involved in all physical experimentation contains two chances of error, the one wholly manipulative; that is, dependent upon imperfections of apparatus or methods; while the other, and from the present standpoint, far more important chance of error is that of undiscovered factors in the phenomena themselves which are being investigated.

A physiologist of deservedly great distinction has expressed the view that just as "the constitution of matter is the main problem of the physicist, the constitution of living matter is the main problem of the biologist." I want to call attention to the fact that "matter" with its connotations in the above statements is, historically, a poetic fancy; and further that it is merely a convenient symbol or fiction when considered from the standpoint of truly objective or observational science. Glance at the subject historically first. You hardly need be reminded that the conception of matter has come down to us from the ancient Latin poet Lucretius who sets forth his views with sufficient elaboration in his great poem "Concerning the Nature of Things"; and that he in turn got the idea from certain Greek philosopher-poets, more particularly Democritus. While Lucretius undoubtedly had much of the spirit of genuine objective science, no modern who studies his work and reflects on the influence it has had on subsequent literature and philosophy and science should forget for a moment that, as concerns methods and results of actual positive science, it was quite impossible for him to be more than mildly scientific; nor forget that his interests were primarily poetic rather than scientific. What he was aiming to satisfy was not so much man's observational and rational nature as his own emotional nature. His undertaking is well characterized by a recent writer in this way: