MODERN VIEWS ON THE CONSTITUTION OF THE ATOM. 
By Prof. A. S. Eve, 
McGill University. 
At a meeting of the Royal Society of Canada held at Montreal, 
May, 1914, the writer gave by request a summary of recent work 
and ideas on the nature of the atom. The object was to concentrate, 
as clearly as possible, but not exhaustively, the results and opinions 
scattered through many different publications. Few men have time 
or opportunity to collect and analyze for themselves the large output 
bearing on this fascinating subject. 
1. It may be well to call attention to the general bearing of the 
situation. Biologists are divided into three camps, vitalists, mechan- 
ists, and those who sit on the boundary fence. The mechanists be- 
heve that all phenomena relating to life are attributed to the action 
of physical and chemical processes only. The vitalists believe that 
life involves something beyond and behind these. Now those who 
investigate natural philosophy, or physics, are endeavoring with some 
fair initial success, to explain all physical and chemical processes in 
terms of positive electrons, negative electrons, and of the effects 
produced by these in the ether, or space devoid of matter. 
If both the mechanists are right, and also the physicists, then such 
phenomena as heredity and memory and intelligence, and our ideas 
of morality and religion, and all sorts of complicated affairs are ex- 
plainable in terms of positive and negative electrons and ether. 
All of these speculations are really outside the domain of science, at 
least at present. 
2. It has been remarked by Poincaré that each fresh discovery in 
physics adds a new load on the atom. The conditions which the 
atoms have to explain may indeed be written down, but to do so is 
merely to make a complete index for all books on physics and chem- 
istry in the widest sense. 
3. In the early days of the kinetic theory of gases, now well estab- 
lished in its broad outlines, it was sufficient to regard the atom as a 
perfectly elastic sphere, and it is about a generation ago” that lead- 
1 Reprinted by permission from Science, July 24, 1914. 
2 Young proved this in 1805, but his work was forgotten, until Rayleigh called attention to it in 1890 
Phil. Mag., vol. 30, p. 474. 
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