752 



SCIENCE 



[Vol. LVI, No. 



have eoone into contaot -witli it during only one 

 part of 'the year, and are unawai-e of its sea- 

 sonal fluctuations. 



A permanent m'arine laboratory, adequately 

 located, engaged actively in research during 

 the -whole year, I should suppose to 'be a car- 

 dinal necessity for biological development. As 

 Mayor himself reallized, ibhe need is so obvious 

 as to require frequent restatement; his reports, 

 and letters from him, show that the realization 

 of suoh a laboratory was for >him a great hope. 



In such a laboratory inquiries become pos- 

 sible which in other situations can hardly be 

 undertaken at alL Temporary social isolation 

 would perhaps have to be faced by resident 

 investigators, and partial loss of eoinitact with 

 libraries; but there are compensations. Time 

 to "sit still and ibliink things over," on the 

 ground, is of tremendous vailue in itself. The 

 zoologist's business, I take it, is to provide an 

 account of animals, in terms, ultimately, of 

 the properties of materials and of their i-ela- 

 tioins. An enormous segment of this task re- 

 mains relatively unexplored. A truly seien- 

 itific natural history of animals, prerequisite 

 for the stability of bioilogicail rtheory, is still for 

 the future. There is here a possibility of huge 

 reward. To grasp it requires intensive ■\vork 

 of a character which existing agencies for 

 zoological inquiry do not make possible, for 

 the work can not be done by means of visits to 

 the seashore in summertime. A permanent 

 laboratory in semitropical waters, moderately 

 equipped, with a stationary staff, not cursed 

 with a "program," could justify itself in this 

 necessary work, and that without great expense. 



That the only American institution for re- 

 search in a position to fll this need may fail 

 to 'do so, seems to me the most serious aspect 

 of the case, rather than the possibility that 

 another summer laboratory may he dosed. 



W. J. Croziee 

 Zoological Laboratory, 

 Rutgers College 



ON TRANSLATING EINST.f^.IN 

 To THE Editor op Science : Generally I am 

 well pleased with whatever Dr. W. J. Hum- 

 phreys writes but I can't say I like so much his 



pleasantly written criticism in Science of No- 

 vember 24. He says that he very much dis- 

 likes my little article on relativity in The Sci- 

 entific Monthly of November, 1922. 



Because, giving the words used the only mean- 

 ings recognized by layman and scientists alike, 

 save a few specialists, several of the assertions 

 are sheer nonsense. Certainly no system of equa- 

 tions, however clever, can prove to one of common 

 sense, the existence of a real fourth dimension; 

 that time and space are not wholly independent; 

 that just because we and the Martians may be 

 unable to synchronize our clocks there is no 

 ' ' now ' ' ; that time is ' ' curved ' ' ; that a phe- 

 nomenon may be seen before it happens; that the 

 mere inclusion of gravitation in a more compre- 

 hensive expression elimiaates it from nature; and 

 so forth, and so on, through a long list of ab- 

 surdities — absurd, that ia, if their customary 

 uieanings be given to the words used. 



It is my custom, whenever I get a new scien- 

 tific book to pick out the most perplexing pas- 

 sage and ti-y to put it into ordinary language. 

 It is more fun, to my mind, than trying to solve 

 the problem of three bodies on a billiard talble 

 and pays better. The book I had in hand was 

 the English vei-sion of "Time — Sp'ace — Matter" 

 by Wey], the leading exponent of Einsteinismus 

 in Germany. The paragraph I selected for 

 translation into the vernacular was the follow- 

 ing: (p. 274.) 



Every world-point is the origin of the double- 

 cone of the active future and the passive past. 

 AVhereas in the special theory of relativity these 

 two portions are separated iby an intervening re- 

 gion, it is certainly possible in the present case 

 for the cone of the active future to overlap with 

 that of the passive past; so that, in principle, it 

 is possible to experience events now that will in 

 part be an effect of my future resolves and ac- 

 tions. Moreover, it is not impossible for a world- 

 line (in particular, that of my body), although it 

 has a time-like direction at every point, to return 

 to the neighborhood of a point which it has al- 

 ready once passed through. The result would be 

 a spectral image of the world more fearful than 

 anj'thing the weird fantasy of E. T. A. Hoffman 

 has ever conjured up. In actual fact the very 

 considerable fluctuations of the g^-^'s that would 

 be necessary to produce this effect do not occur 

 in the region of world in which we live. Never- 

 theless tiere is a certain amount of interest in 



