284 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1933 



Wliat are the cosmic rays? There is no positive answer. We simply try to 

 reconcile what the instruments indicate with our hopes and beliefs and imagine 

 we understand the cosmos. 



The same issue of the Times contains an editorial note entitled 

 " It Is Done with Mathematics ", which reads : 



It is a relief to read that Professor Conipton is back fi(jm studying cosmic 

 rays in the Arctic region with the definite report that Professor Millikan is wrong. 

 The cosmic ray, says Professor Compton, is not a wave, as Millikan thinks, 

 but a particle. 



It is a relief to find that when two men in the high realms of science hold 

 opposite views one of them is right, and the other is wrong. Hitherto the 

 public has had to get used to the idea that when two great physicists differ 

 radically about something in the universe the answer is that both men are 

 right. 



What is the electron, a wave or a particle? It spreads after going through 

 a hole, like a wave. It hits other electrons like a particle. An electron is both 

 a wave and a particle. That would be nonsense by the rules of common sense, 

 but it makes sense in the new sciences. There is a formula for it. 



Some people think that the universe is expanding. Some people think that 

 the universe is contracting. They are both right, says science. Professor 

 Eddington can think of its being an expanding universe and a contracting uni- 

 verse simultaneously. Or, rather, he can find a mathematical formula that 

 will describe that startling situation. 



In the same manner space is finite, and space is infinite. There is a formula. 



Obviously it is a delightful world in which you can have the coffee simul- 

 taneously hot and iced and out of the same cup, your egg simultaneously hard- 

 boiled and scrambled, and the griddle cakes at the same time round and oblong. 



But occasionally it is a relief to find black as tlie opposite of white and right 

 as the counterpart of wrong. 



Speaking to an audience of scientific men, we may pass with brief 

 mention that portion of what I have read which deals with the dis- 

 agreement of doctors. This is no new thing in science, and whenever 

 it has occurred it has ahvays been a passing phase characteristic of a 

 stage at which our knowledge on a certain point was for the time too 

 incomplete for unanimity of opinion. But beneath this good- 

 humored banter there is to be discerned a serious undercurrent to 

 which we may well direct our attention. 



The unsettled condition of modern physical theory has become s. 

 commonplace among physicists. It now appears that it has suffi- 

 ciently penetrated the nonscientific world to produce a state of 

 mingled wonder and bewilderment, suggestive of those earlier days 

 when men began to doubt the authority and infallibility of the 

 Church. Moreover, it is noteworthy that this bewilderment of the 

 editorial mind seems to be caused wholly by the doings and think- 

 ings of physicists, if among these we may include astronomers, for 

 what is astronomy but celestial physics? Chemists, engineers, geol- 

 ogists, and biologists seem to call for no special mention. They are 

 taken for granted as steady-going fellows, cobblers with eyes not 



