166 FROM NEBULA TO NEBULA 



NEWTON'S THEORY CRITICISED 



Since the death of Newton in 1727, the accumulation 

 of scientific data has proceeded with Brobdignagian 

 strides, and this is true of astronomy no less than of the 

 other physical sciences. Linnaeus, the father of modern 

 botany, was only twenty when Newton died ; Dalton, the 

 originator of atomic chemistry, was not born until nearly 

 forty years later, 1766; Cuvier, the founder of sys- 

 tematic zoology, in 1769 ; Charles Darwin, in 1809. These 

 celebrated names imply that there is more for man to do 

 than merely to acquire stores of isolated items of infor- 

 mation; they connote classification and generalization of 

 these data into systems that not only broaden our con- 

 cepts, but supply keys to much that remains unknown. 



Now, if the fundamental truths were the first to come 

 into our knowledge, the building up of a science would be 

 a comparatively simple matter. But they by no means do 

 so. Even so, little harm would come of it, were it not for 

 the proneness of all of us to think and act mechanically, 

 along conventional lines, and to look with disfavor and 

 often with contempt on the " crank" who presumes to set 

 his opinions up against those of the reactionary majority. 

 Since Newton's day, numerous such fundamental truths 

 in astronomy have come to light that our scientists have 

 been treating as minor and tacking here and there onto 

 the most convenient niches in the superstructure, instead 

 of courageously razing, as they should, the ramshackle 

 structure to the bed rock and rebuilding solidly with free 

 hand and fresh initative. 



Who among us, I ask, gifted with ordinary intelli- 

 gence, a heart of perseverance, sufficient leisure, an over- 

 powering love for and interest in the subject, and means 

 of access to the great stores of modern data, should not 

 be capable of constructing de novo a better system of 

 cosmology than Newton or any other man or genius could 

 be expected to do in a day when such basic indispensable 

 truths as the following were unknown and unsuspected? 



1. The age of the earth. Newton conceived it as 

 especially created for man only 6000 years ago, and that, 



