April 24, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



595 



corporate a worthy physical institute. 

 And this institute could pilot the way in 

 those things that pertain to the develop- 

 ment of physical science. A reasonable 

 number of promising sudents would fur- 

 nish working material for the honored pro- 

 fessors, and later they would spread the 

 gospel. 



The publication of the work of such an 

 institute would be a matter of detail and 

 one that would take care of itself. I be- 

 lieve that a suddenly created national uni- 

 versity with the proper ideals is an almost 

 Herculean task. However, if several insti- 

 tutes of the character of the proposed phys- 

 ical institute could be founded one by one, 

 these could later form a loose union for co- 

 operation without waste of energy or loss 

 of spirit. 



If my readers are inclined to admit the 

 strength of the argument in this paper 

 when it is considered in connection with 

 the efforts of our state universities, but 

 not when considered in connection with our 

 endowed universities, they should be re- 

 minded that the latter type of institution 

 has not succeeded in retaining such phys- 

 icists as Rutherford, Jeans, Richardson and 

 Maelaurin. Other foreign physicists have 

 even declined to trj^ our atmosphere. Our 

 self-respect demands that we attempt to cre- 

 ate one center of physical research to which 

 eminent world physicists would be willing 

 and happy to come. I believe that with 

 the establishment of the physical institute 

 we should soon have the spirit, intelligence, 

 work and courage of the American univer- 

 sity professor in physics raised to such an 

 extent that men would be honored with 

 salaries as well as with ranking titles, such 

 that the fellowship of students would mean 

 inspiration rather than a deadly burden, 

 such that irregular administrative manage- 

 ment would not be tolerated, and such that 



a correct public sense of values would be 

 established. 



F. C. Beown 



The State University op Iowa 



THE NEW MECHANICS 



In the past decade, rumors have become 

 current that physicists were attacking criti- 

 cally the ideas which have been accepted in 

 mechanics since the time of Newton. Articles 

 have appeared which assert that there are two 

 mechanics, the Newtonian or classical, and 

 the non-lSTewtonian or modern. And it must 

 occur to many to ask whether this is to be a 

 war of words, as has so often resulted from 

 looking at the same thing from opposite sides, 

 or whether we are living in a world perplexed 

 by two rulers, for we have pretty generally 

 submitted to the doctrine that we and the 

 rest of the universe are parts of a mechanical 

 machine. And it would be an additional per- 

 turbation, in these already troublous times, to 

 have to decide which governor to live under. 

 While the laws of mechanics will probably be 

 modified, still we are now certain that the 

 changes will not affect problems involving 

 matter in any of its ordinary aspects. The 

 human race, in its present state of existence, 

 will thus continue to conform to the laws of 

 Newtonian mechanics; but we must be pre- 

 pared for an early proclamation from Sir 

 Oliver Lodge, the apostle of the science of 

 spiritual mechanics, that death is merely the 

 transfer of those complexes of the ether, called 

 man, to a massive empty space governed by 

 the laws of non-Newtonian mechanics — where 

 our spirits move hither and thither with the 

 velocity of light, and think with an energy 

 comparable to the explosion of an atom. 



The real issues of this very important dis- 

 cussion of the laws of mechanics are now 

 fairly determined, and when the Societe 

 Frangaise de Physique made them the sub- 

 ject of a conference, no one could have been 

 found better fitted to state the case than M. 

 Paul Langevin, of the College de Prance. 

 Now that his opinions have been published, 

 it is comparatively easy to present the ideas 



