212 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1952 



accustomed to, and who is able to exert great influence by virtue oi 

 the respect in which he is held through his good deeds of the past. 

 Radical in his youth, he has become extremely conservative in his 

 own radicalness. The old theory, having in its active youth exhausted 

 all its potentialities in saying: "Do this, and thou shalt find that," 

 now starts to adopt a negative attitude in saying: "It is not worth 

 while to do such and such, because it is guaranteed beforehand that 

 you will find nothing if you do." "To find anything," says the old 

 theory, "would constitute nonsense in my creed, and would be very 

 humiliating to me. It would be contrary to common sense, the new 

 common sense of my era." And so the old theory now becomes as 

 declamatic in saying that certain things are impossible, as before 

 it was declamatic in holding that other things must occur. It is for 

 this reason that in the autumn of the life of some far-reaching theory 

 of physical phenomena, science seems to have come to an end. The 

 phenomena divide themselves into two categories : first, those which 

 are known or are such obvious consequences of the known facts, or of 

 the theory correlating them, that it does not seem worth while to 

 investigate them further; and secondly, those which look as though 

 they are probably embraced by the theory but in a form beset with such 

 complications of calculations as would render the dissection of their 

 whole story beyond the power of man. As a result of this, there seems 

 nothing more to do; research seems to have come to an end and 

 science to be dead. Then some irrepressible individual discovers 

 a phenomenon which goes violently contrary to the theory. After 

 due castigation by the old gentlemen, in the form of the devotees 

 of the theory, the results of the young upstart are confirmed by others 

 and have to be accepted. The theory must then be remolded or 

 possibly completely rebuilt so as to include the new facts. In this 

 rebuilt theory, much that before seemed impossible is now rendered 

 likely. Suggestions which would have been dismissed as impossible 

 with the briefest thought in the light of the old theory, have a 

 reasonable place in the realm of possibilities of the new theory. And 

 again common sense grumbles at having to readjust itself to a new 

 form. In his proper domain, common sense is a counselor of price- 

 less value ; and it is because he justly inspires such confidence in that 

 domain that he becomes the most dangerous of deceivers of those who 

 seek his guidance outside of it. For "common sense" seeks to pin 

 all thoughts of the new to the fabric of the old, and so, ofttimes, it 

 distorts the meaning of the new by destroying that form which was 

 inherent in its own right, and for no purpose other than to fit it to a 

 pattern in which it has no place. The result is a bizarre and shapeless 

 thing out of harmony with the form into which it has been forced, 

 and out of harmony with the form which was its own. Common 



