■November 5, 1915] 



SCIENCE 



627 



imagination which I will permit myself to 

 speak of as the malady of Peter Bell. I 

 make no attempt to disguise the fact that 

 Peter Bell and his celebrated primrose have 

 begun to show the ravages of time. Even 

 so, I suspect that science will not with im- 

 punity lay her desecrating hand upon 

 Wordsworth's parable. And yet that per- 

 ennial primrose by a river's brim, which 

 through every changeful year 



A yellow primrose was to him 



And it was nothing more — ■ 



that weather-beaten botanical specimen, I 

 say, symbolizes a kind of mental myopia 

 with which the man of science feels him- 

 self to be as much concerned as the poet. 

 Science has a very definite part to play in 

 the treatment of this insidious ailment. It 

 should adjust our vision to the larger 

 meanings of things in the material world. 

 And by this I mean to say that science 

 should develop — and it should discipline — 

 the constructive imagination. 



This thought, I must admit, is very far 

 from novel ; to some, nevertheless, it may 

 seem to be a rather quixotic notion. Let 

 me then briefly set forth some of the 

 grounds that lead me to adopt it. I might 

 cite here Tyndall's historic address on the 

 scientific use of the imagination — one with 

 which every student of science should be 

 familar. But lest I be accused of calling 

 upon a prejudiced witness, I will turn to 

 the dry light of legal authority, recalling 

 words that were written long ago by Sir 

 Frederick Pollock: 



■It is an open secret to the few, but a mystery and 

 a stumbling block to the many, that Science and 

 Poetry are own sisters; insomuch that in those 

 branches of scientific inquiry which are most ab- 

 stract, most formal, and most remote from the 

 grasp of the ordinary sensible imagination, a 

 higher power of imagination akin to the creative 

 insight of the poet is most needed and most fruit- 

 ful of lasting work. 



This was an eminently sound and up- 



right judgment, yet the mystery seems not 

 wholly to have been dispelled. Even now 

 we not infrequently are asked: Is not sci- 

 ence a negation of all that is poetic or 

 imaginative? Is it not concerned with 

 hard facts, with exact weights and meas- 

 ures, with sharply defined and rigid con- 

 cepts, with the iron rule of "blind force" 

 and "inexorable law" in nature? Well, 

 this view of science is known esoterically, in 

 the seclusion of the laboratory, as the Great 

 Myth. We can make some use of it, to be 

 sure, as a kind of polite fiction with which 

 to introduce the neophyte to the methods 

 of science. We glibly insist that the stu- 

 dent must above all things learn to observe, 

 measure and weigh with "irreproachable 

 accuracy." With this demand he strug- 

 gles valiantly but in vain; meanwhile, 

 however, the fundamental truth begins to 

 dawn upon him that nobody is able with 

 perfect accuracy to observe, measure or 

 weigh anything. We are always in error, 

 more or less. Science — and here I mean 

 the sciences of observation and experiment 

 — has not the smallest hope of attaining to 

 absolute precision. She is quite content to 

 determine the probable limits of error ! 



The fundamental concepts of science are 

 in no better case than her weights and 

 measures. They have no finality. They 

 are but a means of advancing knowledge; 

 they move as science moves. But yesterday 

 we were told that atoms are infinitesimal, 

 indivisible, ultimate. To-day we are hold- 

 ing our breath as we watch the physicist 

 soaring upon the wings of imagination in- 

 side the atom in pursuit of still more in- 

 finitesimal, still more indivisible, still more 

 ultimate electrons which, like the stars of 

 heaven, are rushing through the tremen- 

 dous solitudes of intra-atomic space! To- 

 morrow, no doubt, the scene of these dar- 

 ing flights will be shifted to the nebulous 

 and illimitable regions that lie still unex- 



