May 5, 1922] 



SCIENCE 



481 



could get all this he would be not a layman but 

 a scientist. The most we can expect is that the 

 layman may gain sufficient acquaintance with 

 scientitie thinking to understand the methods 

 and aims of research and to appreciate its value 

 to civilization. That he does not commonly 

 acquire such comprehension and appreciation is 

 because the men ^yho understand the value of 

 science have been too often unwilling to take 

 the pains to impart their information and 

 inspiration to him. 



We are told that Agassiz required of his stu- 

 dents in every department to prepare "first a 

 monograph, second a scientific lecture, third a 

 popular lecture, fourth a simple child's tale." 

 How many of our annual army of Ph.D.'s 

 would pass the third and fourth of these intelli- 

 gence tests? Agassiz had his reward in the 

 dozens of devoted disciples who became the 

 teachers of the next generation and in the 

 thousands of young people who bear his badge 

 as they search forest and strand with curious 

 eyes. But we need more men of the Agassiz 

 type — and we seem to be getting fewer. 



England, as I showed in Science, seems to 

 have more men of high standing who are will- 

 ing and able to translate their learning into the 

 vernacular. It would be hard to match in all 

 America the popular lecturers of the Eoyal 

 Institution from Faraday to Bragg. But even 

 in England we hear complaints of the growing 

 gulf betAveen the specialist and the public. The 

 once-popular lectures to workingmen are now 

 said to be running short of both speakers and 

 hearers. Last year the columns of Nature 

 were filled for months with discussions of why 

 the lay membership of the British Association 

 for the Advancement of Science was falling 

 off. The British Association has always had 

 the advantage of ours in the large number of 

 citizens, not professionally engaged in scien- 

 tific pursuits, who would support and attend 

 the annual meetings but now it is becoming, 

 like the American Association, a congeries of 

 highly specialized sections. 



Several of the correspondents in Nature ex- 

 pressed the opinion that the public had lost 

 interest and confidence in science because scien- 

 tists have lost their fighting spirit and the 

 courage of their convictions. They take every- 

 thing lying down nowadays and do not dare to 



defend their views or even defend their right 

 to hold and teach their views. 



This is a point worthy of consideration by 

 those American men of science who have 

 adopted the policy of treating with dignified 

 contempt the present legislative and ecclesias- 

 tical attacks upon their intellectual freedom. 

 Little is being done in scientific circles to check 

 the rising tide of superstition and intolerance 

 now sweeping over the land. Perhaps when 

 appropriations are cut off, as in South Caro- 

 lina, on the ground that the university has an 

 evolutionist on the premises our scientific 

 pacifists may sharpen up their pens and turn 

 out literature as interesting to the general 

 reader as Huxley's debate with Gladstone about 

 the demons who converted the pigs of Gadara 

 into pickled pork. 



Dr. Dorsey is wise in putting "accounts of 

 discoveries" first in his list of popular science 

 subjects. But who will write them? I have 

 been hunting in vain for writers who could 

 sense the dramatic elements in such a scene as 

 Archimedes' bath and tell how this ancient graft 

 case led to the law of specific gravity. Who 

 will describe the feelings of Faraday when he 

 saw the loose end of a little magnet rotating 

 about an electric wire in the dingy laboratory 

 of the Royal Institution and then explain what 

 that had to do with the trolley cars that are 

 passing in the street? 



The history of science is as rich a field for 

 the cultivation of good literature as the history 

 of literatm-e, art and music but it remains un- 

 titled for want of attention. Students have 

 been trained to look another way. The aim is 

 now to eliminate the personal element from 

 science and reduce it to an abstract and time- 

 less formula. This may be necessary as a sci- 

 entific method but it naturally results in the 

 decline of interest. The old textbooks are 

 more readable than the modern. A distin- 

 guished physicist, in discussing this point with 

 me, said: "When I was in college I had to 

 study Hastings and Beach but I read Deschanel 

 for my own amusement." I am not advising 

 that our textbooks should return to the 

 leisurely literary style of long ago but we can 

 not expect depersonalized science to be popular. 

 Whatever is without "human interest" is not 

 interesting to himianity. Dehydrated potatoes 



