53' 



NATURE 



[June 30, 1910 



generation ; and to such a functional unit of the innate 

 constitution only, and to no part of it alone, and to no 

 other fact or feature of the organic world, can, I submit, 

 the name instinct be properly applied." 



II. — Are Secondary Qualities Independent of Perception? 



Dr. T. Percy Nunn maintained in his paper " (i) that 

 both primary and secondary qualities of material bodies 

 ' are really in them, whether anyone's senses perceive them 

 or no ' ; (2) that they exist as they are perceived ; and (3) 

 that sensations, as mental entities exercising a representa- 

 tive function, need not, therefore, be postulated." He 

 attacked the view that there are elements in experi- 

 ence (e.g. tooth-ache) whose being consists " only in 

 being e.x.perienced," and these are therefore psychical in 

 nature, showing how the (false) belief in their psychical 

 nature arose. In place of this view he advocated a form of 

 the theory of realism which he considered to be more 

 consonant with the facts of science and immediate experi- 

 ence, and which involved the theses above-mentioned. He 

 devoted much space to the consideration of the problems 

 of error and illusion as they appeared from this point of 

 view. 



Dr. F. C. S. Schiller criticised Dr. Nunn's theory of 

 realism from the point of view of pragmatism, and 

 endeavoured to show that all his arguments were based 

 upon pragmatical postulates. He also considered critically 

 the senses in which the words independent, extramental, 

 reality, had been used in the paper, and to what extent 

 the theory advocated could be regarded as a metaphysical 

 one. 



HI. — Psychological Papers. 



Prof. G. Dawes Hicks criticised the views of attention 

 which made it either, on the one hand, " a unique 

 faculty " or " mode of mental energy " having presenta- 

 tions for its objects, or, on the other hand, a property 

 of the presentations themselves regarded as independent 

 and interacting with one another. He advocated the 

 treatment of the problem of attention from the genetic 

 point of view, and urged that the attempt should be made 

 to form some conception of the conditions under which 

 attention became possible in the primitive mind. After a 

 consideration of the various factors influencing the atten- 

 tion process, such as feeling-tone, intensity of stimulus, 

 &c., he traced the gradual growth of voluntary attention 

 and indicated the relation of attention to willing and to 

 the consciousness of self. 



Mr. W.' H. Winch discussed the value of the " faculty 

 doctrine " in the light of experimental results obtained in 

 the investigation of different forms of memory, accuracy, 

 &c. ' The results of investigations into the transfer of prac- 

 tice effects, in which the method of " equal groups " was 

 employed, were given, and were shown to prove slight 

 transfer in the domain of memory, but none in that of 

 accuracy, the improvement in the allied function being so 

 small, even in the former case, compared with the 

 improvement in the medium of training itself, as to make 

 the balance of evidence against the " faculty doctrine." 



Mr. E. Bullough described a series of observations made 

 on a large number of individuals as to their preferences 

 for colours, when seen in pairs, and the reasons given by 

 the subjects themselves for such preferences. The two 

 methods of (A) appreciation and (B) production were 

 employed, and the material used was coloured silks. The 

 subjects were found to belong to the following " percep- 

 tive types " : — (a) objective tvpe ; (b) " physiological " 

 type ; (c) " character " type ; (d) associative type. Definite 

 relations were shown to exist between these perceptive 

 types and the various criteria of preference or rejection of 

 pairs of colours, such as " balance," " unification and 

 dissociation," " consonance and dissonance," &c. 



The societies dined together at the Criterion Restaurant 

 on Friday evening. Prof. VV. R. Sorley being in the chair. 

 In the course of the after-dinner speeches the important 

 suggestion was made by Prof. S. Alexander, and accepted 

 with acclamation by the company, that the Aristotelian 

 SociPty should strive to become the representative society 

 of English philosophers, much as the Chemical Society, 

 the Physical Society, &-c., represent English science in 

 those subjects. ' Wii.uam Brown. 



NO. 2122, VOL. 8.;] 



THE MOTION OF THE MOON. 



'T'HE American Journal of Science for June contains an 

 -*■ interesting article in which Prof. E. W. Brown dis- 

 cusses possible causes for the want of agreement betwecN 

 the moon's observed motion and theory. In his second 

 section Prof. Brown gives a summary of these outstanding^ 

 discordances: — (i) a secular acceleration 2" greater than 

 that due to the change of the eccentricity of the earth- 

 orbit round the sun ; (2) a term of 300 years' period and 

 coefficient 15" ; (3) a term of 60 years' period and co- 

 efficient 2". 



The secular acceleration is usually ascribed to tidal 

 friction. Prof. Brown considers certain hypotheses as tf) 

 the origin of the three-hundred-year term. He takes iv 

 further notice of the sixty-year term. It is quite possibl> . 

 however, that the secret will be ultimately revealed by tlv 

 term of shorter period, for if we assume that the fore- ~ 

 required for the two terms vary as the coefficients and 

 inversely as the square of the periods, it appears that the 

 force required for the smaller term is the larger ; moreover, 

 the period of the sixty-year term is already known with 

 a smaller percentage of error, and the next few years' 

 observations will accentuate this consideration in its favour. 

 The fourth section of the paper lays down the funda- 

 mental rule which controls this detective problem. .Any 

 hypothetical cause must be dismissed from consideration 

 that would produce a motion in either perigee or node 

 above thirty seconds of arc in a century. Here Prof. 

 Brown is at least as cautious as there is any need to be ; 

 he might have said fifteen seconds instead of thirty. 



The sixth section dismisses from consideration the figure 

 of Jupiter, the cumulative effect of the asteroids, and light 

 pressure. Imperfections in the calculated theory "seem- to 

 Prof; Brown inconceivable, and those who have followed 

 his work will agree with him. 



The seventh section raises the hypothesis of an equ.-itorial 

 ellipticity in the sun's figure. There is no direct evidence 

 of such an eUipticity, and, moreover, it becomes necessary 

 to assume that the period of rotation of the sun must be 

 of a length that can be specified to its hundred-thousandth 

 part. It is true that this period lies between the extreme 

 values that have been determined from observation of the 

 photosphere, and these values differ by six parts in a 

 thousand ; but it is clearly a large assumption to take 

 I 00000 (five zeroes) as the true value of a quantity of 

 which all we are entitled to say is that it probably lies 

 between 1+0-003. 



The eighth section deals with magnetic hypotheses. The 

 discordance between theory and observation in the moon's 

 motion is not due to the secular motion of the magnetic 

 axis of the earth, but it is possible to frame hypotheses as 

 to the moon's magnetism that cannot be dismissed as 

 imuossible. 



The conclusions of the ninth section, dealing with the 

 moon's libration, are very similar in character to those of 

 the preceding section. Some hypotheses can be ruled out, 

 for thev involve librations that would have been already 

 detected by observation, but other hypotheses remain 

 tenable for the present, in particular a long-period libration 

 of fiftv seconds. 



THE TRAINING OF ENGINEERS IN FRANCES 

 TN a lecture published in the Revue generale des Sciences 

 J- for April, M. Andr^ Pelletan compares the training 

 of engineers in France wiih the similar training given in 

 the United States, England, and Germany. He devotes 

 himself more particularly to the courses of study provided 

 for those intended to. occupy the highest engineering posts. 



In so far as the lecture deals with the courses else- 

 where than in France, there is, naturally, little that is 

 new in his paper, but his statement in regard to the 

 training given in the Ecole polytechnique will cause sur- 

 prise to those not well acquainted with the work of that 

 important institution. 



It appears that students enter about the age of seventeen, 

 a-, soon as they have passed the French equivalent for an 

 English matriculation examination (the baccalaureat). 



1 " La Formation des Ingenieurs en Franci et a I'Etranger." By Andre 

 Pelletan. 



