Fantasy Football Challenge - Football Fanatics Library

Fantasy Football Challenge - Library of Books for Football Fanatics

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Popular Science Monthly

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amount indicated by the mountain ranges, in anything like the time which we are led to assign on other grounds to the geologic periods? Rudski has also attempted to connect the shrinkage and age of the earth. Both these methods depend on how fast the earth is losing heat, that is on the geothermal gradient. Since at present, owing to the apparently large but unknown contribution of radioactivity to that gradient we know very little about what the other portion is, it seems unwise to give any figures, especially as almost all the numerical data are largely guess work. It will, however, be fair to say that very long times for the age of the earth seem to be indicated, nearer millions of millions than millions unless the radius of the gaseous core was mainly small or its rate of contraction with loss of temperature high. THE CASH VALUE OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH BY PROFESSOR T. BRAILSFORD ROBERTSON UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA THERE can be no doubt that the average man and woman in Europe and America to-day professes a more or less nebulous feeling of respect and admiration for the scientific investigator. This feeling is not logical, for very few have ever met or seen a scientist, fewer still have ever seen the inside of a scientific laboratory, and hardly any have ever seen scientific research in the making. The average man in the street or man of affairs has no very clear conception of what manner of man a "scientist" may be. No especial significance attaches in his mind to the term. No picture of a personality or his work arises in the imagination when the word "scientist" is pronounced. More or less indefinitely, I suppose, it is conceded by all that a scientist is a man of vast erudition (an impression by the way which is often strikingly incorrect) who leads a dreary life with his head buried in a book or his eye glued to telescope or microscope, or perfumed with those disagreeable odors which, as everybody knows, are inseparably associated with chemicals. The purpose of this life is not very clear, but doubtless a vague feeling exists in the minds of most of us that people who are willing to pursue such an unattractive career must be worthy of admiration, for despite all the triumphs of commercialism, humanity still loves idealism, even idealism which seems objectless because it is incomprehensible. From time to time the existence of the scientific man is recalled to the popular mind by some extravagant headlines in the daily press, announcing some utterly impossible "discovery" or some extravagantly nonsensical dictum made by an alleged "scientist." The "discovery" was never made, the dictum never uttered, but no matter; to-morrow its place will be taken by the latest political or matrimonial scandal, and the public, with excellent good sense, will forget all about it. From time to time, also, there creeps gradually into the public consciousness a sense that SOMETHING HAS HAPPENED. Brief notices appear in the press, at first infrequently and then more frequently, and an article or two in the popular monthlies. The public becomes languidly interested in a new possibility and even discusses it, sceptically. Then of a sudden we are awakened to the realization of a new power in being. The X-ray, wireless telegraphy or the aeroplane has become the latest "marvel of science," only to develop in a very brief period into a commonplace of existence. Many indeed are aware that we owe these "marvels" to scientific research, but very few indeed, to the shame of our schools be it spoken, have attained to the faintest realization of the indubitable fact that we owe almost the entirety of our material environment, and no small proportion of our social and spiritual environment, to the labors of scientists or of their spiritual brethren. Long ago, in ages so remote that no record of them survives save our heritage of labor well achieved, some pastoral savage, more reflective and less practical than his brethren, took to star-gazing and noting in his memory certain strange coincidences. Doubtless he was chidden by his tribal leaders who were hard-headed men of affairs, skilled in the questionable art of imposing conventional behavior upon unruly tribesmen. But he was an inveterate dreamer, this prehistoric Newton and the fascination of the thing had gripped his mind. In due time he was gathered to his fathers, but not before he had passed on to a few chosen ones the peculiar coincidences he had observed. And thus, from age to age coincidence was added to coincidence and the result of all this "unpractical" labor was, at long last, a calendar. Let who will attempt to estimate the cash value of this discovery; I will not attempt the impossible. I will merely ask you to picture to yourselves humanity in the condition of the Australian Aboriginal or of the South African Bushman; devoid of any means of estimating time or season save by the daily passage of the sun, and I ask you, "supposing that through some vast calamity, a calamity greater even than the present war, humanity could at a stroke evolve a calendar, would it be worth while?" I for one think it would. The evolution of the calendar is not an inapt illustration of the methods of science, and of the part which it has played in shaping the destiny of man. Out of the unregarded labors of thousands of forgotten men, and a few whom we now remember, has sprung every detail of that vast complex of machinery, method and measurement in which to-day we live and move and have our being. In all ages scientific curiosity guided by the scientific discipline of thought has forced man into new and more complex paths of progress. Lacking the spirit of research, a nation or community is merely parasitic, living upon the vital achievements of others, as Rome based her civilization upon the civilization of the Greeks. Only an indefinite and sterile refinement of the existing environment is possible under such circumstances, and humanity stays stationary or sinks back into the semibarbarism of the middle ages. The few scattered students of nature of that day picked up the clue to her secrets exactly as it fell from the hands of the Greeks a thousand years before. The foundations of mathematics were so well laid by them that our children learn their geometry from a book written for the schools of Alexandria two

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