74 



NA TURE 



[May 



1907 



and which are g^labrous. The two forms of exact- 

 ness correspond to the two ways in which we may 

 try to make certain of hitting the bull's-eye of a 

 target when we shoot at it. We may either improve 

 our marksmanship or enlarge the bull's-eye. The 

 latter is the only method of ensuring uniformity, of 

 enabling oneself to predict the result with certainty. 

 To this the biometrician justly replies, " This is no 

 real uniformity. It is an ideal uniformity substituted 

 for a real variability. Your shots are scattered round 

 the centre of your bull's-eye just as mine are scattered 

 outside mine. I never hit. My bull's-eye is a point. 

 I keep a record of the deviation of every single shot 

 from it. I am faithful." To which the Mendelian 

 replies, " I always hit. I keep no such records. I 

 am successful." We do not hold a brief for either 

 party. A bull's-eye so large that it cannot be missed 

 is as unfair as one so small that it cannot be seen is 

 unpractical. All we wish to insist on is that because 

 Mendelians can predict and biometricians cannot, it 

 does not follow that the units with which the 

 Mendelian deals are the units of which the bio- 

 metrician's masses are composed. The Mendelian 's 

 units are the biometrician 's masses, except when the 

 latter exceeds his limits and includes within his 

 masses more than one such unit. The Mendelian can 

 no more predict about the units of which the bio- 

 metrician's masses are composed than the bio- 

 metrician can, except when the biometrician includes 

 more than one Mendelian unit in his mass. 



CERTAIN ASPECTS OF SCIENTIFIC WORK. 

 Progress of Science in the Century. By Prof. J. 

 Arthur Thomson. Pp. x-l-536. (London: W. and 

 R. Chambers, Ltd., 1906.) Price 55. net. 



IN a book bearing the present title it is surely un- 

 fortunate to find that progress in one branch of 

 science, and that certainly not the least important, 

 is wholly ignored. Yet while chemistry, physics, 

 astronomy, geology, physiology, psychology, and even 

 ■sociology each, has a separate chapter devoted to it, 

 not a word is said about the remarkable develop- 

 ments that have taken place in mathematical science 

 during the century. The changes which recent times 

 have witnessed in regard to our conceptions of the 

 notion of space are certainly no less remarkable, and 

 are quite as capable of being outlined in a popular 

 work as the kinetic theory of gases or developments 

 of theories of the ether. 



The study of matter and energy is so closely con- 

 nected with the study of space that a discussion of 

 the former without some reference to the latter 

 must give a reader an incorrect impression of the 

 present state of physical science. But the omission 

 of frequent and explicit mention of the work of the 

 mathematician in certain other directions is also 

 likely to be misleading. Why, the reader may ask, 

 is Lord Kelvin's vortex atom theory recognised — 

 w-e will not say accepted — by the scientific world 

 while Mr. Horatio Gubbins (to use a fancy name) 

 has been pestering secretaries of societies and editors 

 in vain with his theories of gravitation or the ether, 

 and no scientific man will have anything to sav to 

 NO. i960, VOL. 76] 



him? It may be that the reader in question is Mr. 

 Gubbins himself. If he studies the chapters on " The 

 Scientific Mood" and "The Unity of Science," he 

 will find in them every justification for believing that 

 his grand discovery marks a new era in the advance- 

 ment of science. If, again, he turns to p. 178 

 and reads the paragraph " Value of these Hypo- 

 theses " at the end of the chapter on physics, he 

 will find the sentence : — 



" These molecular and ethereal hypotheses are 

 human imaginings — and nothing more; they are 

 constructed in terms of one sense ; that of sight ; 

 they are attempts to see that which is invisible, to 

 invent a machinery of Nature, since the real 

 mechanism is beyond our ken ; but it must be 

 observed that these hypotheses are not vain imagin- 

 ings, for they prove themselves yearly most effective 

 tools of research, and that they are not random 

 guesses, for they are constructed in harmony with 

 known facts." 



This statement may" be true enough, but the sk/>- 

 pressio veri in the omission of all reference to the 

 rigid framework of mathematical equations and 

 formulae supporting the hypotheses conveys a dan- 

 gerous sussestio falsi to the unmathematical reader. 

 Mr. Gubbins is perfectly convinced that his own 

 theory, at any rate, is constructed in harmony with 

 known facts, whatever may be said about Lord 

 Kelvin's theories, which he not unfrequently has 

 " proved convincingly " are wrong, and he may even 

 take unto himself to say that he has at last discovered 

 a theory which is something more than a mere human 

 imagining. No book of the present kind should be 

 issued which does not strongly emphasise the fact 

 that the true test of every scientific theory is in all 

 cases a quantitative test based on a comparison of 

 the formulae of the mathematician with the measure- 

 ments of the experimenter. Otherwise the English 

 reader will be led to believe that the needs of science, 

 which are now being pressed forward, can be ade- 

 quately met by the erection of laboratories and the 

 endowment of scholarships for passing elementary 

 examinations, while the brain workers who interest 

 themselves in researches carried out in their own 

 studies with ink and paper will find themselves, as 

 time goes on, more and more unable to cope with 

 the accumulation of unsolved problems that is being 

 pressed on them from every quarter. 



Descending to matters of detail, we find many im- 

 fxjrtant theories conspicuous by their absence. We 

 need only specify the phase rule and the second law 

 of thermodynamics as instances in point. Yet the 

 very possibility of a world existing which is inhabited 

 by living beings, including man, depends essentially 

 on this neglected second law. It seems almost un- 

 necessary, in view of this omission, that the author 

 should apologise in his preface for the absence of any 

 reference to radium on the ground that the book was 

 printed before the discovery had been made. 



It cannot be denied that in attempting to trace the 

 scientific progress of a century, even in its barest 

 outlines, in a volume of this size the author undertook 

 an impossible task. It is probable that he would 

 have done better if he had confined his attention to 



