50 WHAT IS LIFE? 



mathematical science. Moreover, Professor Hicks is 

 driven to confess that these " fundamental ideas are 

 quite different from those underlying the well-known 

 kinetic theory of gases of hard 1 atoms." Hence all is- 

 confusion. He adds that in the above contradictory 

 notions " Extremely little progress has been made in 

 their mathematical development, and until this has 

 been done more completely we cannot test them as to 

 their powers of adequately explaining physical pheno- 

 mena." Now when we consider the great number of 

 very able mathematicians existing and the wreckage of 

 their theories which " is appalling," we can come to 

 only one conclusion, viz. the phenomena in Nature are 

 beyond the rigid Science of Mathematics. In fact 

 Nature abhors the rigid. 



But the mathematician is so confident that his 

 powers are absolute, and he is so dogmatic in his tone, 

 that he is unapproachable. He stands alone, a monu- 

 ment of his own creation his own egotistical greatness. 

 Professor Hicks, speaking on the part of the mathe- 

 matical physicist, states, "When these relations shall 

 be known, all physical phenomena will be a branch of 

 pure mathematics." What are physical phenomena? 

 Trace a minute cell in its ever-varying and minute 

 alterations of form, watch that cell altering into cells 



what experiments confirm. Preconceived ideas, subjected to the 

 severe control of experimentation, are the vivifying flame of 

 scientific observation, whilst fixed ideas are its danger. Do you 

 remember the fine saying of Bossuet ? ' The greatest sign of an ill- 

 regulated mind is to believe things because you wish them to be so.' 

 To choose a road, to stop habitually and to ask whether you have 

 not gone astray, that is the true method." (" Louis Pasteur, His Life 

 and Labours," ]8S5, p. 219.) 

 1 The italics are ours. 



