ROMANCE OR SCIENCE? — HEYL 289 



The second editorial Avliich I have quoted raises a new question. 

 The bewilderment of the editorial mind is caused here by the bizarre 

 results obtained from mathematical formulas. Here again we may 

 disregard the disagreement of doctors and focus attention on the 

 point of basic importance. 



We physicists have used mathematics freely since the time of 

 Newton, and the results obtained have until lately always been 

 regarded as regular and orthodox. It is only in the twentieth cen- 

 tury that our mathematical conclusions have begun to appear 

 fantastic. 



Tiie reason for this is not far to seek. There has been introduced 

 into mathematical physics a body of doctrine which, while familiar 

 to mathematicians for upwards of a century, had never been taken 

 seriously by physicists prior to Einstein. I refer to the geometry 

 of curved space and of space of more than three dimensions. 



Perhaps nothing could be more transcendental and inconceivable 

 than this hypergeometry, but mere inconceivability has never both- 

 ered mathematicians ; nothing but inconsistency can do that. And it 

 is a fact that once we admit the fundamental postulate of a fourth 

 dimension it becomes possible to build up a hypergeometry as logical 

 and consistent as that of Euclid. 



The introduction of these novel concej^ts into physics has not taken 

 place without a struggle. Much of the opposition disappears, how- 

 ever, when one realizes that Einstein did not propose these hypothe- 

 ses as physical facts, but merely as a sufficient, though not necessary, 

 mathematical description of certain phenomena. He himself regards 

 this child of his brain quite sanely. " No amount of experimen- 

 tation," he is reported to have said, " can ever prove me right. A 

 single experiment may at any time prove me wrong." Yet the 

 theory of relativity has gradually gained a hearing and a growing 

 acceptance because of performance, by its ability to do things a little 

 better than was possible before. Though its conclusions often ap- 

 pear strange, some of them have been experimentally verified, and as 

 a result we have added to our stock two new phenomena — the 

 deflection of light rays passing close to the sun and the shift of the 

 Fraunhofer lines in an intense gravitational field. With these prac- 

 tical results to support us, I think we may maintain that hyper- 

 geometry and the theory of relativity have justified their provisional 

 acceptance as working tools, no matter how romantic their conclu- 

 sions. Even the concept of an expanding universe may yet be 

 experimentally verified. Things equally strange have happened. 



We may now consider another possible item in the indictment 

 against us, one of which we shall have to accuse ourselve,s, as it ap- 

 parently had not yet reached the editorial mind. Physicists them- 

 selves have been much concerned over an attack by certain of their 



