FAIRY TALES OF SCIENCE

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXVI, Issue 5163, 2 January 1904, Page 9

FAIRY TALES OF SCIENCE

SPIRIT-RAPPERS AND SPOOKS. SECRET OP THK VITAL SPARK. ‘The ordinary run of men live among phenomena of which I bey care nothing and know less.” those, words of Sir Oliver Lodge, which Mr Carl Snyder prefixes to bis I'emiii kanlu book, "New ('one:prions in Science.” would probably be much lens trim ii tve imd several glowing prophets of the new dispensation in science such as the author himself. Ho writes with the cash of an American and an oat husiast with fine heroworship for llie modern captains of science; with exultation in the revolutionary victories they have won, and infections confidence in .still greater-vic-tories to follow, and with a clearness that interprets to the plain man the necessary scientific jargon that commonly proves a deterrent to most of ns. Hut it must not be supposed that lie is merely a ‘-popular’ 1 retailer. Mr Snyder is a genuine all-round student of science, and his own ideas are often original and suggestive. Very typical is his attitude towards spirit-rappers and telepathists. For their benefit he recurs to a-favourite theme —the g'-ossness of the human senses as compared with the implements of a modern laboratory. We extract an instance or two:—

A galvanometer will flex its finger at the current generated simply by deforming a drop) of mercury—pressing it out from the sphere to .shape °I an egg. Xl l o amount of work done by a wink of tho eye would equal a hundred billion or tho traits marked on the scale of a very delicate instrument. It is at least ten thousand times as sensitive a-s tho eye or tho car

Kolilsrauch and Topla have devised barometers so sensitive to variations of air-pressure that a person walking through an open doorway at tho opposite side of a room will set the indicator swinging. It will betray a variation of tho hundredth part of tho millionth of an atmosphere, do too iu comparison with our ability to count about 10 or 11 per second. Fodderscn has been ablo to devise tin instrument which will count down to tho hundredth part of a millionth of a second.

Very well"(says Mr Snyder), if tho existence of "psiiychic forces” (thoughtwat es, “spooks," etc.) is to bo demonstrated, let them, instead of appealing to our gross senses, produce an effect on some of these sensitive instruments. It is a clever retort to the banjo and pianchetto spiritualists, but it rests of course upon an identification of mind with matter to which many of its would not he disposed to assent. Mr Snyder, however, does not hesitate in that identification. lie finds the teaching of modern science to be that ‘‘life is-a series of fermentations,” and that chemistry and electricity will cx-j plain tho working of consciousness in that “highly phosphorised fat" which wo know as the human brain.

By this time wo have got far from the false impression which the first pages of the book momentarily suggest—that Mr Snyder is going to show that modern science has advanced very little after all upon antiquity. Ho shows there that in ancient B.C. Alexandria the astronomers had clear and just notions of tho earth’s shape and motion round tho sun and that Hero then anticipated tho steam-turbine. But his point is that all this was lost again for centuries. ! chiefly because until society began to shift from a military to an industrial basis there was no force ,of numbers to secure that invention and use of mechanical appliances, which are tho mainstay of modern science. Thus tho real conquering advance was delayed until a very few generations ago.

“Between the discoverer of the law of gravitation and a man of like powers of "mind living now. lies a gap almost as great as lay between Newton and an aboriginal inhabitant of Croat Britain.” Sir Isaac’s probable gasping hewiUk--mont if hb could be brought back and confronted with a Alonso instrument, a dynamo, or a Marconi installation is amusingly pictured. Newton laid tho foundations of the science of light, yet of the nature of light—that it is simply a form of electricity—he had no mortal idea. '. ■ Were ho shown Professor Langley’s wonderful bolometer, and told that it will measure tho heat of a caudle a mile or more away, ho would’ bo sure you were making game of the old man.

Unless a set-back occurs, we may consider' ourselves on tho high road to tho proof that heat, light, electricity, X-rays—in short, all forms of energy _ate. fundamentally -one- Tho world is likely to be shown to bo composed of inconceivably minute particles, tho ultimate units of a single primitive matter, all in a state of tremendous motion.

How minute these particles are it is barely possible even to suggest. Tho thinnest part of a soap-bubble, tho centre of the little black spots seen just before tho bubble bursts, is probably about 30,times as thick as a molecule. Tho molecule, or ultimate particle, ol any one of tho 70 elements of which tho universe is made up is of itself constructed from at least two more primi-' tivo particles, called atoms—or, at any rate, must be supposed to bo so to account for tho phenomena of chemical combination; and the parent matter particle of all cannot bo larger than a tenth of one of these. Its diameter, at the outside, is one two-hundred-and-fifty-millionth of an inch. Air Snyder, for one, Is -equally confident that tho secret of life itself is almost within our grasp. Ho bases his belief mainly upon the experiments of l)r. Loeb, of Chicago, who has made “dead” ' heart beat and stop beating according to che particular chemicals ho put- into-tho fluid in which it was placed, and who has “played; with I-fe” in an extraordinary manner in the case of certain rudimentary animals.