THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 1906. 
SCIENCE AND FOLLY. 
The Seven Follies of Science: a Popular Account of 
the most famous Scientific Impossibilities and the 
Attempts which have been Made to Solve Them. 
By John Phin. Pp. viii+178. (London: Archi- 
bald Constable and Co., Ltd., 1906.) Price 5s. 
HESE “ Follies’? are the squaring of the circle, 
the duplication of the cube, the trisection of an 
angle, perpetual motion, the transmutation of metals, 
the fixation of mercury, and the elixir of life; we 
miss from this list the flattening of the earth. The 
author is an American; he writes for ordinary readers, 
and makes his subject interesting; he seems to make 
no mistakes. He dwells at much greater length upon 
the first and fourth of the follies than the rest. In 
addition to these seven classical ones he gives an 
aceount of four others: perpetual lamps, the alkahest 
or universal solvent, palingenesy (the revival of a 
plant or animal from its ashes), and the powder of 
sympathy. He adds a division on the fourth dimen- 
sion of space and some paradoxes, micrography, 
illusions of the senses, and two tricks. The book 
finishes with an account of some arithmetical problems 
and the fulcrum of Archimedes which are probably 
“ curious ’’ to the ordinary reader. 
Readers of Nature, and not merely ordinary 
readers, may spend a pleasant hour or two in looking 
through this book, reflecting on the follies, not of 
scientific persons, but of those persons supposed to 
be cultured who are ignorant of physical science in 
an age when applications of the principles of physical 
science are transforming the world. Our greatest 
legislators and writers and divines are no better 
guarded mentally from tricksters than their ancestors. 
We know that a new Mahomet might have just as 
much success with cultured and uncultured persons in 
the twentieth as in the seventh century, but it is 
startling to find that a new Cagliostro might prob- 
ably be even more successful in the twentieth than in 
the eighteenth century. A scientific man does not 
deny the possibility of almost any miracle, he only 
says that it is extremely improbable. He admits that 
man is probably limited in his senses and faculties, 
and that all his physical laws are mere analogies; that 
real comprehension of the universe is altogether out 
of the question. These admissions have become 
known now to. unscientific persons, and no Sweden- 
borgian was more ready to take the cock-and-bull 
statements of his master on trust than 99 per cent. 
of newspaper readers and writers at the present time 
are willing to accept absurd stories as true. A cul- 
tured person says that of course a perpetual motion 
is impossible, but he invests his. money in a company 
which promotes something which is really meant to 
create energy. He scorns the Middle Age idea that 
a sympathetic powder applied to a dagger will cure 
a distant wounded person, but although he has been 
to a public school he is a profound believer in Christian 
science. 
NO. 1932, VOL. 75| 
net. 
NATURE 
to 
nN 
Few men probably receive more communications 
from earth flatteners and circle squarers and arc tri- 
than the writer. When he 
one he does not feel pleased, and yet it ought to be 
pleasant to think that there are so many men in the 
sectors present receives 
world who refuse to accept dogma. A crank is de- 
fined as a man who cannot be turned. These men 
are all cranks; at all events, we have never succeeded 
in convincing one of them that he was wrong. The 
usually accepted axioms, definitions, and technical 
terms are not for them. When they use a term, some- 
times evidently in two different senses in the same 
syllogism, it is impossible to find exactly what they 
mean by it. If Mr. Phin had had his reviewer’s ex- 
perience, he would have greatly added to the size of 
his book by referring to many parts of physics where 
men are just as unwilling now to accept authority as 
the men of whom he and he would have 
pointed out that our real difficulty is with the men 
who are partly right, who think they 
have a new idea and try to explain it in unscientific 
language, and, as they do so, denounce the ortho- 
dox beliefs which they have been unable to under- 
stand. 
From many follies the common people have been 
saved for ever by the engineers, the men who apply 
science. In this twentieth century it is difficult to 
believe in sympathetic wax images and powders and 
the other things cherished “by our ancestors who 
executed witches, because miraculous railway trains 
and telegraphs and telephones and thousands of 
things to be seen in every shop, on every street, on 
every road are known to be explainable in reasonable 
ways. To believe now in the evil eye or devil 
possession, ghosts, haunted houses, or the powers 
of the esoteric Buddhist it is necessary to have a very 
special kind of mental power and of education and 
environment. It may be that only one in every 
100,000 of the inhabitants of these islands is capable 
of snatching the fearful joy which accompanies such 
beliefs. 
As already said, we think that the author of this 
book makes no mistakes, but if he had known more 
he might have made the book a much Jarger one with 
advantage, and we cannot help thinking that he is 
not well read in the delightful memoirs of the six- 
teenth century, when witcheraft had a really good 
time. Then, as to a fourth or twentieth dimension in 
space, he gives practically no information to the ex- 
pectant reader in this division of his work, yet there 
is probably no subject on which the cultured reader 
of the present day desires instruction more (perhaps 
excepting radium). A man may get some knowledge 
of Greek or Japanese literature without knowing the 
Greek or Japanese languages, and so the cultivated 
person hopes to get scientific ideas without knowing 
the language of science. The author hardly tries to 
hide his own ignorance of this part of his subject, and 
here, as everywhere else, he gives only what he him- 
self feels sure.that he understands. He writes for the 
man in the street, and we can give no higher praise 
than to say that the man in the street will understand 
him. JixBe 
writes ; 
men 
c 
