Knowledge. 



With which is iiicorporati-d ll^irdwicki - ^tRiicu tiossip. .iiui tlu- Illuslraud Scientific News. 



A Monthly Record of Science. 



Conducted In- Wilfred Mark Webb, F.L.S., and E. S. Grew, M.A. 

 li:i!Rr.\KY, 1912. 



THE GRAPHIC EXPRESSION OF SENSE. 



i5v .\NN.\ 1)i:an: 



lU'TCHMK. 



Tm: art of Typography has been, during the last 

 twenty years, almost revolutionised. Entirely new 

 processes have been in\ented. and it is claimed by 

 the School of British Printing that it has made 

 advances to an extent almost unparalleled in the 

 recent history of any industry. Yet. with all these 

 improvements in machinery and appliances, no 

 similar ones have been made in the notation of the 

 English language for four centuries, and we are 

 confronted almost evePk" hour of the day with the 

 anomaly of a fifteenth-century print to express 

 tile complicated ideas, and define the accurate 

 scientific conceptions, of the present day. Writing 

 and printing as practised by civilised man are 

 degenerate graphic arts, and while \ery much thought 

 and money have been e.xpended on mechanical pre- 

 cision, this inost obvious fact has been overlooked, 

 that if a drawing or symbol is unsuited to indicate 

 sense or meaning.it is not only useless, but misleading, 

 to ornament it or render it attractive to the eye. 



It may be objected that " suitability " is a matter 

 of opinion and taste, but this is not the case. The 

 Ogee curve as assumed by the swan's neck is a 

 beautiful because a suitable form : a walking-stick 

 designed on this model would be a hideous object, 

 because this form is wholly unsuitable to suggest 

 strength or support. The laws of graphics or the 

 expression of sense b\' the graphic arts are, like other 

 physical laws, the ascertained causes of invariable 

 phenomena. 



It was the opinion of the late Professor Max 

 Miiller that until Language is studied as a physical, 

 rather than an historical science, no practical improve- 

 ment can take place in the means adopted by man 

 for the expression of his thought or meaning. 



The methods of investigation employed b\- the 

 physicist are to accurateh" observe objects, to record 

 facts and phenomena in their order of importance 



statistically, and then gradualh', by the aid of the 

 itnagination. to guess a cause or invariable law which 

 might account for the recurrence of these phenomena. 

 He then proceeds to eliminate one after another 

 those hypotheses which do not consistently explain 

 the phenomena, until the true, or at least a workable 

 law is discovered. 



Following this scientific onler we may deduce the 

 follow ing grapliical laws. 



Mail is a silciit-rciuliiiii aiiiiiuil n'lio dnncs his 

 idccis. — This definition of man is as true now as in 

 the hieroglyphical age of the ancient Egyiitians. 

 Man has the power of communicating his ideas b)- 

 s[)eech, in common with many other animals, but as 

 far as we know there exists no other creature who 

 draws his ideas. 



Therefore writing, or symbolism, is just as inevit- 

 abl\- a natural product as the honey of the bee, the 

 coral island, or the spider's web. Graphic symbolism 

 is a function of the brain of man. Symbols control 

 his actions, are photographed u|)on his brain, are 

 associated with all his intellectual eflbrts, and from 

 their influence he can by no means free himself. 



Man has been from time immemorial a slave to 

 the trtiditional symbols which he employs; he has 

 no more power to change these symbols than a 

 magpie has to alter the shape of its nest. 



Notations grow like trees, in accordance with 

 graphical, which are physical laws. The brain of 

 man is developed, and its nervous telegraph apparatus 

 is differentiated and taught to function, b\- the 

 traditional symbols which surround him on all sides. 

 Pnit man is not aw are of this slavery. The mathema- 

 tician imagines himself free to construct theories, 

 to develop his ideas at will, and to express them as 

 he chooses, little thinking that he himself is a slave 

 to traditional sxmbols and absolutely dependent upon 

 a paper memory for his calculations, and that were 



