244 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 60 



RELATION BETWEEN THE SCIENCES OF YESTERDAY AND TODAY 



To return to the title of this address, the science of yesterday was 

 largely the evolution of blind discovery of phenomena, the discovery of 

 fire, the discovery of the potentialities of the wheel, the ingenious com- 

 binations of circumstances and principles, which were ever before us, 

 to the use of man. There was another crude but nevertheless practical 

 and extremely ingenious ordering of the things of nature in the systems 

 of laws formulated by Newton and Galileo, and later by the giants of 

 science of the 19th century, culminating in a sensing of the potentiali- 

 ties of the newly discovered phenomena of electricity. These develop- 

 ments led to the formulation of the general principles of electrical 

 engineering, the realization of the dynamo, the electric motor, and 

 later wireless telegraphy, and so forth. Then, starting toward the 

 end of the 19th century, came an era of new interests. Experimental 

 researches resulted in the discovery of phenomena not continually 

 evident to the eye of man, phenomena which could only be brought 

 into existence by the efforts of his researchers. The behavior of the 

 planets, the general phenomena which govern mechanical machines, 

 were always displayed before mankind and awaited only the exercise 

 of man's ingenuity to harmonize them, and use them to his service 

 when possible. The phenomena of electrical engineering of three- 

 quarters of a century ago were not tilings evident to the eye until 

 researches ferreted them out and organized them into purposeful 

 activity. The later developments beginning toward the end of the 

 19th century concerned the contents of the boxes of which I have 

 spoken earlier. They concerned the discovery of the electron, the 

 proton, X-rays, and allied phenomena of atomic behavior. These 

 things were completely unevident to the eye of man until research 

 forced them out of hiding and caused them to reveal their activities 

 in newly created devices which would not have existed except for man's 

 activity. Having become released from their bondage of obscurity, it 

 became clear that these strange new things had, all along, been playing 

 a part in phenomena which had been available to man's viewing from 

 time immemorial. Up to this time, the laws of chemistry were largely 

 empirical as were the laws of biology. The laws of what we call 

 physical astronomy, as distinct from those of celestial mechanics, 

 were in a very scrappy state as regards consistency of understanding, 

 and the things of greatest interest had not forced themselves spon- 

 taneously upon man's notice. However, the development of the great 

 telescopes and allied equipment presented an entirely new challenge 

 for the understanding of things and behaviors vastly different in both 

 scale and nature from those which, up to that time, had been the only 

 things displayed for man's curiosity. And it came to pass that the 

 new discoveries in connection with atomic laws went far toward pro- 



