230 Kansas Academy of Science. 



based upon accurate and adequate observation. That branch 

 of science known as theology has its full share of freaks and 

 frauds and fallacies, as shown by the numberless creeds that 

 afflict the human race. The crazier the founder, and the more 

 foolish the dogma, the more devoted are its followers in many 

 cases. The concrete sciences, too, have their quota of fakes 

 and fakirs. Only the sublime may have its antipode in the 

 ridiculous. 



There are two kinds of fallacies : First, those promulgated 

 by scientific investigators, whose hypotheses have missed the 

 true cause for the well-attested effects; and second, mere 

 fancies which have no rational basis in natural phenomena. 

 In the first class are a goodly list of distinguished names. 

 Darwin's hypothesis of pangenesis to explain the facts of 

 heredity is a typical case. Darwin was an investigator and 

 philosopher par excellence, and his theory was somewhat less 

 absurd than its predecessor, which predicates germ within 

 germ within germ, ad infinitum. The theory of abiogenesis, or 

 spontaneous generation, seems as tenacious of life as the fabled 

 hydi'a. Every one of its multiple heads has been cut off, time 

 and again, and by all the laws of bionomy it should have died 

 the death long ago, but it persistently bobs up now and then, 

 with such notables as Professors Haeckel and Loeb as spon- 

 sors, not to mention the interminable list of cranks and semi- 

 cranks seeking notoriety. Newton's corpuscular theory of 

 light died hard, but it died, despite the efforts of Wilford Hall 

 et al. to galvanize it into life. It had a sort of post-mortem 

 vindication, however, in the phenomena of radio-activity. 

 Dalton's theory of the indivisible atom received a rude shock 

 from the same source. 



But it is with the second class of fallacies that this paper 

 is chiefly concerned. Two or three years ago I received a 

 pamphlet from some unknown individual in Delaware, Ohio, 

 claiming to disprove the law of gravitation. His assumptions 

 were not based on facts, and in closing he naively said he had 

 not yet tested his theories, but he promised to do so as soon 

 as he got sufficient leisure. A gentleman came into the of- 

 fice of Simon Newcomb, on the third floor of the Smith- 

 sonian Institution, Washington, D. C. "You astronomers are 

 all wrong," he declared; "I can prove that there is no such 

 thing as gravitation." "Yes, you can," replied Newcomb. "If 

 you will jump out of that window and not fall to the ground. 



