THE DREAMS OF SCIENCE

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 195, 12 May 1908, Page 2

THE DREAMS OF SCIENCE

WONDERFUL RIDDLES OF LIFE. ARE ROCKS AND MEN AND .METALS THE SAME MATERIAL? Science is dreaming eagle dreams to-day. Dazzled, lu\]f-frightened by its own visions, it dares haidly hint at what it sees. The fairy-story of radium, the miracle of wireless communication across half a planet, the witchcraft of the X-ray, are only sober rest-houses 011 a road that reaches beyond into a wonderful domain whore the supernatural is the natural and rapt-prophecy pales before demonstrated fact. ; Chemist and biologist, naturalist and electrician, see tilings hitherto undreamed; and says Julius Muller, to-day the layman who is lorlified with accurate knowledge, of the higher natural sciences finds that the matter-of-fact. cautious deductions of the dry technical report take him on flights'into more uonocrlul worlds than ever were conceived by a Jules Verne. . Most fascinating of all, is, of course, the riddle of how life began. How and where, in what chaos, did the first spark of this vague, still incomprehensible thing that we call the vital principle, flame up? Immediately, in striving to hark : back to that all but unimaginable past, the mind of the ordinary man conjures a planet whirling red hot througli space. Surely in that withering fire, hotter than any heat that science can produce to-day. life could not have existed. 1 > THE VERY ROCKS ARE ALIVE! But, says the new science, we do not know what -life-.is. h"ow that there are bacilli to-day that can pass through heat and cold so fierce that jt can be expressed only in figures that mean nothing to the mind. Furthermore,-heat means life itself. Could thei earth have been red hot if the vital principle had.not permeated it even then? This is a far stop beyond the helpless theory of the evolutionists of only five years ago, who vrer<? willing to toy with the theory that tho world was a dead planet after its fire baptism, and that the vital principle came, down to it ironi another celestial body—perhaps in a chance fragment of meteoric ore; the first germ, hurled through space immeasureabloand tossed by chance,on this thing that is now our world. i The scientific seers to-day look in imagination on a world that was all molten mass,: and whirling, a fearful ' sun: J" 1 ? 11 .? countless other constellations in their throes of , birth. Then they see tho great globe cool and blacken, slowly, slowly, through- millions of slow, patient ■ ears, till it revolves in orderly harmony with tlie rest.. But now- it is a stern, dead thing.. On its jagged lava peaks there' crawls nothing, Ibere is not a motion of infinitesimal limb, not a minute specie that has volition not a knowing breath, in all that fearful expanse that looks less like a world itian a gate to everlasting death. Everywhere is rock—black, hopeless, dead rock. Or is .it life? Yes! 6ays the now ■science. .Rock.is. crystallisation; and crystallisation is life. This thing, crystallisation, men, have known' ever since men began to think. Tho old Chaldeans knew it. Man used his knowledge of it in the stone age. thus, and so would the form of crystallisation permit him to split his flints. Thus, and bo might he shape his maul. And now—a new belief about this old knowledge: That man Ims looked into the rock for' uncounted years, and liover perceived that it was alive as truly living as worm or bird of man himself. . ■ : ■ CRYSTALLISATION A BIRTH. ■Crystallisation, we are to learn now, is' not a mere mechanical grouping of- dead atoms. It is a birth. Only at first Sight docs this theory seem wild: On''second thought ? vp : n jhe unscientific mind will sec suddenly it- is far wilder to believe, as everybody-has' believed so lo'nj*, that it was a purely m'echa-mical-process that made the crystals' of salt" iorm themselves so, and" thccrystals of granite form themselves thus. : How could there be a purely mechanical original cause? What could have set it in motion? What is this thing, a crystal?. Minoralogical,. geological, arid chemical science have all given learned definitions for Jt; but in effect crystals are recognised only by their - appearance. . Now, in recent years,' 111 its hunt tor the ancestor of organised life, biology has searched the deep seas and the shallow road-' sioo ponds with.strange results.' Beginning .with-the epochal years of the Challenger expedition, each year has seen now riche3 added from a living world that numbers uncounted millions more representatives than there are human lives, yet whoso very existence was" undreamed of only a generation -ago. 'It is the world of the diatoms and foraminifera, most plentiful in the ocean. To thc : naked eye thoy are either invisible, or appear only as minute, specks of dirt. It takes 1500 diatoms to make a body as big as the head of apin. But placc one of these under a modern high-power microscope and a marvellous thing appears. Haeckel has gathered thousands of .forms of those amazing creatures * and .has published hundreds of" pictures' showing-that ill that microscopic world alone there are far more varieties than' there arc among all the mammals.Of the earth.

\ ' METALS CAN CATCH DISEASES. . Jsow compare these living geometrical forms with sonic that Ave have been accus- • tomed to consider "dead" crystals under our old teaching that the worid is divided into tw;o. groat classes, the organic and tho inorganic. Look at the sno\v. crystal engraved ; a micro-photograph.: Look- at the sand figuro mad 6 by strewing sand 011 a 'glass' plate arid then stroking it with a bow. Have not those vibrations produced something strangely like the general forms of all the others, "living" and "dead" ? , 'Look at the sand form of Decandolle. Ho made it by filling a little receptacle w'ith sand • and water, and then giving it a regular, circular motion. After a while the sand as- , sumed form. Docs not that form look like that of the diatom? Then look at the thin disk of saltpetre as 1 it appears under polarised light. Modern industry, that is. walking hand in hand with oven the most abstruse science today, ha 3 furnished another demonstration. A few years ago metallurgists finished a series of experiments that proved that metals can catch disoase. They infccted zinc and tin and saw the sickness pass through sheet after sheet like a plague till the metal crumbled away in grey powder. They poisoned copper and iron with chemicals and saw them weaken, to recover the old strength again when the poisoning was checked. They worked metals till they were tired out. .Then they rested them, and without other treatment they won back their original strength. They went even farther than that. They maltreated metals, and the tortured ore reacted by losing all its strength, not to regain it till the infliction of cruel stress or compression had ceased. . THE MYSTIC TRAIL. This is a theory 110"more. The principles thus learned are admitted and used in all great metallurgical operations to-day, though the men who use the knowledge pay no regard to its metaphysical aspect. So, in the strife to solve tlie riddle of life we have gone bpek a little farther on the mystic trail. A few years ago we had reached a point where wo believed that all life came out of the sea Now we are getting ready to believe that man's ancestor may have been in the rock. But, after all, this takes Us only a liltio way fai tlier. Even the fascinating theory that the first life reached this earth from some other planet did not take us far. It still left us helpless before the eternal question: Where and how did life originate 011 that other planet? So it is with the rock. If crystallisation is life, what started the first Wonderful movement of the first atom? A few years ago specialists might have answered Chemical action. But to-day the very bases of the theory of chemistry are being attacked by a now theory. That is, that every operation in tho world is olectrical—in the world of mind as well as matter. IS ELECTRICITY LIFE? 1 There have' been brilliant experiments lately. They bear technical names, nieaningloss to any except men far advanced in puro science, Their processes are too intricate to bo intelligible t-o any except speei.il-

ists. But they lead to the new theory' that , every form of action, every .visible thing, every (lash of sunlight, every whispering stir of leaf or grass is electrical. The experi-, menls have been tried ■ with simple things like salt and water. They have ueen tried with human blood. They have been tried with metal and drug, mineral and vegetable. And they lead the experimenters to believe ihat the whole world, mental and physical, is composed of oloctrical atoms, or atomic electricity, though that is not the name they , give it. ' What that means is that evermore, everywhere, whirl ing, darting, flashing ceaselessly in limitless intricacy, yet ever obedient to ono . solemn law, there fly infinitesimal bodies, each containing, as in a capsule, an atom of elf ctricity. ! Two German scientists did something recent? ly. Th-oy made a galvanic element of carbon and iron and immersed it in a solution of salts of uranium. When various other metallic salts wore added queer objects began to form on the carbon. They grew swiftly,-until at last they clung like veritable mushroom growths. At first they are .transparent.' Then : tliey begin to colour beautifully, so that some become bright red on top, while .the stem -it, palo yellow, and the under part, of the' hear.' is pale rose. "Inorganic mushrooms" the discoverers named them. But with the, microscope can be secn fiuo canals extending from, tjie-'top down through the stem-like veins.. . This term "inorganic" would : have been final a few years ago...'".But now, when advanced thought is more than Voady to proclaim that there.is nothing that is inorganic, we can ask .with propriety: Why ■ should .these . growth's be called "inorganic"?. How can wo, prove that a thing is "organic" ?". Because it moves, or grows, or eats, or breathes ? The amoeba is organic without doulit in the old. sense. Yet it required years of observation to discover that-it is not a bit of dead water jelly. It movos, but almost imperceptibly. It eats, hut in no way known before; for it. has neither, mouth nor throat nor intestines. .. Its food enters it just like a bit of pebble might be thrust into a bit of jelly. LIKE A. MIRACLE. \

Are these mushroom forms, then, born of electrical action from metallic salts, destined to teach us something-, of the birth of life at last?. Some years ago, Professor. Loeb took ■the unfertilised eggs of a sea urchin.and laid them into a chemical mixture of which sea water was the greatest part. There resulted • what seemed .like a; miracle. The eggs became fertile, and further experiments in tins-direc-tion have been recorded. Bur, what if we accept the theory thatelectricitv is the mother of. life? . Then it was tho electrical impulse, that thrilled through the sea water and touched the egg of the sea urchin. And in the egg there began,to pulse .something. .'-.So, when the earth'was .young what was fire became black, and what was fluid , became dense, -. somewhere, somehow,' the change of temperature suddenly reached a- point where an impulse ■ 'was born. In readied intojilack chaos and lo !■ something moved.- The. first crystal was born. : ' : These are all theories still.; Research must ever, limp, with, exact and tedious study behind tho eagle flights of the poet ISLan. But like theories they are keys that lead from room..to room.!. The key Darwinism led us far. lo unlock the next door, we may need a new key'.and the old may have to be .thrown away.':: But without it we could not. havo reached, tlie second door. And-so with tho new and daW. ing theories that arc touched 011 here! They , will bo replaced in their turn by new'ones.. : But all, the discarded ones as well as .thosa that remain, were, and • are, necessary' to lead us on;—" Science. Sittings.". .