Febbuaey 14, 1896.] 



SCIENCE. 



22.5 



can hope to approach and none to excel. Taken from 

 our midst in the early prime of life, it can neverthe- 

 less, -with all truth, he said that in the voluminous re- 

 cords of his incessant work he has indeed left behind 

 him monumentiim aere perennius. ' ' 



G. Beown Goode. 



SCIENTIFIC MATEBIALI83I. 



At the meeting of tlie Naturforscher- 

 Versammlung, held last September, at Lii- 

 beck, Germany, Professor W. Ostwald, of 

 Leipzig, delivered an address which was 

 received with great interest, and gave rise 

 to much discussion. The address has since 

 been published in the Zeitschrift fur Physi- 

 kalische Chemie (Volume XVIII., p. 305), 

 under the title ' Die Ueberwindung des 

 wissenschaftlichen Materialismvis,' and it 

 seems desirable to call attention to it in 

 this place, as it is highly suggestive, and its 

 careful study is likely to be of benefit. The 

 following is in the main a free translation 

 of the more important parts of the address: 



There is one point upon which scientific 

 men agree, and that is that all things con- 

 sist of moving atoms, and that these atoms 

 and the forces acting upon them are the 

 final realities. According to this, a natu- 

 ral phenomenon is explained when the ex- 

 act nature of the motion of the atoms of the 

 substance exhibiting the phenomenon is 

 known. There is nothing beyond this. 

 Matter and motion are ultimate concep- 

 tions. This is scientifie materialism. The au- 

 thor believes that this view is untenable. 

 It must be given up and a better view sub- 

 stituted for it. He states particularly that 

 what he has to say has, at present, nothing 

 to do with ethical and religious conceptions. 



In investigating natural phenomena we 

 first register and classify. From registration 

 we reach the system ; from this the laiv of 

 nature, the most comprehensive form of 

 which is the general conception. The most 

 important element in the law is the invari- 

 ant, a quantity that remains unchanged 

 whatever changes may take place. Such 



an invariant is mass. This did not at first 

 appear broad enough, and thus the concep- 

 tion of matter came to light, and the physical 

 laiu of the conservation of mass was trans- 

 formed into the metaphysical axiom of the 

 conservation of matter. By this step a num- 

 ber of hypothetical elements are introduced 

 into the conception that was originally free 

 from hypothesis. It is now held that when, 

 for example, iron and oxygen combine, the 

 two forms of matter are in the compound, 

 only they have new properties. This the 

 author considers nonsense, for all that we 

 know in regard to a certain stuff is that it 

 has certain properties. 



Galileo introduced the conception of the 

 constant working force and thus explained 

 the phenomenon of falling bodies. Newton , 

 assumed the same force as acting between 

 the heavenly bodies and governing their 

 motions. These great successes led to the 

 conviction that all physical phenomena 

 might be explained in the same way. Thus 

 arose the mechanical conception of nature. 

 It is not generally noticed to what an ex- 

 tent this conception is hypothetical, indeed 

 metaphysical. On the other hand, it must 

 be noted that this mechanical conception of 

 heat, electricity, magnetism, chemism, has 

 not been confirmed in a single case. It has 

 not been possible to express the relations 

 by a corresponding mechanical system, so 

 that nothing is left unaccounted for. 



The history of optics furnishes an excel- 

 lent example. As long as optics included 

 only the phenomena of reflection and re- 

 fraction, the mechanical conception of 

 Newton was satisfactory, according to 

 which light consists of small particles sent 

 out in straight lines. When later the 

 phenomena of interference and polarization 

 came to be studied, it was found that New- 

 ton's mechanical conception could not ex- 

 plain them, and the vibration theory of 

 Huygens and Euler was adopted. But it 

 was then necessary to imagine some medium 



