SCIENCE, YESTERDAY, TODAY, TOMORROW — SWANN 245 



viding for these things an understanding which would have been im- 

 possible without them. These same discoveries of the atomic realm did 

 much to provide a more complete picture of what was going on in 

 chemistry, and even in biology. 



THE SCIENCE OF TOMORROW 



And here we stand today. We have a consciousness of vast ac- 

 complislmaent in the interplay of what we call fundamental experi- 

 mental research and fundamental theoretical research. Much har- 

 mony has been brought into tilings which would otherwise be obscure ; 

 and yet, the returns of the harvest of discovery have tended to re- 

 veal so much more to be fitted mto the scheme and have given evi- 

 dence of so much more yet to be discovered, that the expected labors 

 of the future may well outweigh all those of the past. And what 

 direction may these labors be expected to take in this era of the 

 future — in tliis science of tomorrow ? 



Wliile there is much yet to be done in correlating and enriching 

 all that is known about what we call the material world, I feel that 

 before long, we shall have to face the problem of the nature of life 

 and of all that goes with it, if real progress is to be made. We can- 

 not forever keep the laws of dead matter separated from those of liv- 

 ing things; for after all, everything that happens as the result of 

 our eiforts in the utilization of what we have already learned must 

 be initiated by the mind of man. I can imagine the heavens to go 

 on their courses without any attention from mankind. I can be happy 

 in the thought of a contmual process of activity which, in its gross 

 aspects at any rate, follows the kind of deterministic behavior which, 

 a hundred years ago, might have been thought to be the "way of 

 life" of all nature. But if, today, I make an atomic bomb which 

 does drastic things, it is I who formed the decision to make it; and 

 in so doing, I interfere with what would have happened had I not 

 made this decision. At tliis point, the mind of man seizes upon the 

 otherwise smooth running of tilings, and, in some way, that which 

 is in my mind interlocks with inanimate nature to direct its course. 



THE ROLE OF NEW ENTITIES 



And in facing the necessity of bringing harmony into realms which 

 today stand apart, what has the experience of the past taught us ? We 

 have a clue in what has happened in the domain of atomic struc- 

 ture itself. There was a time when all we had to work with were 

 atoms regarded as indivisible things, without any properties other 

 than were provided by empiricism as demanded by the laws of chemis- 

 try. No progress was being made in understanding the laws of 

 spectroscopy or the laws which related the elements to one another. 



