446 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXVIII. No. 718 



following contemporary tendencies in school 

 and church. Professor George A. Coe's re- 

 ported difficulties with the Methodists at 

 Northwestern University and his acceptance 

 of a chair at Union Theological Seminary are 

 anomalous products of two conflicting move- 

 ments in the educational and religious worlds 

 — ^movements which may, in the course of 

 years, lead to still more curious situations. 



Andover's transfer to Cambridge and 

 Union Theological Seminary's approaching 

 shift to Momingside Heights reflect a yearn- 

 ing for university affiliations, born partly of 

 intellectual disconfent and partly of necessity. 

 Unlike the college freshman, many theological 

 professors and most theological students have 

 felt the power of modern science and thought, 

 and the weakness of dogmatics, apologetics, 

 and Hebrew granunar as defenders of their 

 faith. Not long ago, one of the largest semi- 

 naries in the country was , peremptorily 

 ordered by its students to modernize its cur- 

 riculum; and, on every hand, the demand is 

 being made that religious opinions be left to 

 individuals, and the seminary teach biology, 

 psychology, history, ethics, hygiene, and social 

 reform. The result, at this hour, is incon- 

 gruous in the extreme. While the universi- 

 ties are crying, " Let the seminaries come to 

 us, that we may be spiritualized ! " theolog- 

 ical students ask for a chemical laboratory 

 that they may be trained in modern scientific 

 method. But the incongruity is natural. 

 The forces of intellectual conservatism reside 

 in the masses ; they make themselves felt most 

 acutely in the ordinary college simply because 

 the latter is the meeting-place of culture and 

 the average man. In the seminary, though, 

 and particularly in those which have lived 

 through an open controversy between dogma 

 and liberalism, a handful of cultivated 

 churchmen, half secluded and full of doubts, 

 are seeking to square their beliefs with 

 modern knowledge and their practises with 

 the needs of modern life. Their own per- 

 plexities and their remoteness from the un- 

 schooled laity make them liberals. No won- 

 der, then, that a training school for Protestant 

 ministers may welcome a philosopher obnox- 



ious to a nominally unsectarian university. — 

 New York Evening Post. 



DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 



MATHEMATICS FOR ENGINEERS 



To THE Editor op Science : I have followed 

 the recent discussion of mathematics for engi- 

 neers with much interest and with a great 

 sense of satisfaction that at last the discussion 

 of technical education is being published in a 

 place where it must, perforce, be brought to 

 the notice of our physicists; for our physicists 

 (I mean to refer to them here in their capacity 

 as teachers) have paid but little attention to 

 the remarkably active discussion of technical 

 education that has been going on for several 

 years. 



Something is wrong with technical educa- 

 tion, that is quite evident, but I am not en- 

 tirely satisfied with any diagnosis which up to 

 this time has been given of the situation. I 

 think that the most vital question which now 

 confronts us in the field of technical educa- 

 tion is how adequately to establish the per- 

 ceptive phase of the physical sciences. In 

 order that I may explain precisely what I 

 mean by this expression, I must use an 



]!9^othing is more completely established by ex- 

 perience than the necessity of employing an active 

 agent, such as a horse or a steam engine, to drive 

 the machinery of a mill or factory, to draw a car, 

 or to propel a boat. The common feature of every 

 case in which motion is thus maintained is that 

 a force is exerted upon a moving hody and in the 

 direction in which the body moves. Such a force 

 is called an active force, and to keep up an active 

 force involves continuous effort, or cost. A force 

 which acts upon a stationary body, on the other 

 hand, may be kept up indefinitely without cost 

 or effort; such a force is called an inactive force. 

 Thus, a weight resting on a table continues to 

 push downwards on the table, a weight suspended 

 by a string continues to pull on the string, the 

 mainspring of a watch continues indefinitely to 

 exert a force upon the wheels of the watch if the 

 watch is stopped. The idea of an inactive force 

 is applicable also to a force which acts upon a 

 moving body, but at right angles to the direction 

 in which the body moves. Thus, the force with 



