Progress in Science.

Progress, Volume I, Issue 6, 2 April 1906, Page 143

Progress in Science.

Fears have sometimes been expressed, says a writer in a contemporary, that the nmeteeth century, having been so fruitful of splendid scientific discoveries, must needs be followed by a period of intellectual sterility, just as England had to pay for the inspiration of Shakespeare's time by a long spell of literary flatness. But at present there is every promise of scientific progress being greatly accelerated during the twentieth century. Indeed, it

would hardly be too much to claim that in the next twenty years as much new knowledge will be created as m the whole of the last century. In every branch of science we are on the eve of discoveries which to the savants of 1806 would have seemed to be dreams capable of realisation only after many centuries of toilsome research. To-day we are in the midst of a maze of intellectual light which transcends that of former times as far as the electric arc outshines the ancient tallow dip. Nor is there any boastfulness m the claim because our forerunners started the movement which is now carrying us along at so exhilarating a pace. For instance, the one grandly simple old invention of printing is responsible for much of the rapidity with which modern science progresses. It enables the whole world to co-operate for the advancement of knowledge. It not only puts new knowledge on record, and distributes it wherever there is an enquiring mind, but it stimulates an ever widening circle ot eager spirits to find their highest pleasure in carrying the scientific method into the study of Nature. Thanks to this method, science is building up out of transitory and limited individual minds what may be called a permanent mind of humanity, the breadth of which attains to sublimity While the astronomer sounds the depths of space in search of a limit to the material universe, the physicist probes the secrets of a drop of water, which he finds packed with molecules far more numerous than all the stars of the firmament that have yet been detected by the most sensitive photographic plate. Although by their minuteness these escape the recognition of our senses as completely as the separate drops in a distant cloud, man has mastered many of their secrets through the operations of his mind. Through science man has launched himself upon the infinite reaches of the universe lying beyond our senses. Virtually every one of our human senses has had its range increased as much as that of the human voice by the telephone. On the same ether as carries without mutual interference the luminous vibrations from every particle m the universe we now launch the gigantic waves of wireless telegraphy that passes unheeding through material obstacles, or the minute ones of the Roentgen tube which open up that region of the universe that lies veiled in the darkness of opacity. Science is now busy exploring the whole gamut of vibrations that lie between these two extremes, and gathering the facts which will build up a complete art of looking into opaque bodies and studying details that are far beyond the powers of the most perfect microscope. In the realm of chemistry an activity that puts that of the proverbial hive to shame is doggedly pulling the most complete atoms of living things to pieces and learning bit by bit the art of putting them together again. If he so desires, the chemist can build up the most beautiful variety of sugars from their elements by elaborate methods of his own, but at the same time he is getting nearer and nearer to the heart of Nature's private ways of working. Such researches are making the chemist and physiologist familiar with a wonderful variety of ferments. Not long ago it was believed that a ferment must be a living part of a living thing ; but from the inside of the yeast cell of alcoholic fermentation the chemist has dragged a substance that is assuredly not living, and yet splits the molecule of sugar into smaller molecules of alcohol From malt a ferment can be extracted so powerful that in an hour it can pull to pieces four thousand times it own weight of starch and deliver it as sugar. These are but a couple of instances of the hundreds of ferments at play in the tissues of living things. By means of ferments thrown into the blood one organ controls another to harmonious co-operation with the utmost nicety. Even sleep may be regulated by these extraordinary active chemical substances. It is certain that they play a fundamental part in the complex phenomena of sex. Now the most remarkable fact in the whole of natural history is the occurence of sex distinctions through the entire realm of biology, from the lowest forms of life to the highest. Probably, then, sex will be traced before very long to the necessity for two complimentary types of molecular structure, as necessary to one another as are action and reaction m the operation of force. It is true that in experiments with the eggs of sea urchins it has been found that for a certain amount of development the male sex can be dispensed with, if only suitable simple chemicals are provided. But this really strengthens the hypothesis that sex is ultimately a matter of molecular structure. And m these broad questions of vital chemistry electrical science has every year a larger say. It is now known that in the architecture of molecules certain atoms of electricity, called electrons, bind the atoms of matter together with those forces which are spoken of as chemical affinity. So the play of forces in the domain of the molecule is chiefly electrical. By con\erging lines of thought science is being led to look upon the two sorts of electricity as the ground stuffs of the whole material universe. Concerning the relations of the luminiferous ether to the two sorts of electricity science is almost silent.

Probably the grandest task of the physicist is to invent means of finding out some of the properties of this medium, which is everywhere, but eludes every sense. The only positive fact we know about it is that it carries light and other electrical vibrations with a certain fixed enormous speed. The ether which confers on matter most of its properties, and reveals them to our senses, has hitherto almost completely hidden its own. But even if the ether should prove an impenetrable obstacle in the attempt of science to analyse things back to their essentials, there is absolutely no limit to those more practical investigations in the opposite direction whose aim is to unravel the chemical and physical rationale of all the vital processes. The most humanly interesting future of science undoubtedly lies with the physiologist, who is every day applying with more boldness to the animal body the principles that physical science has discovered in the inanimate world. Physical and biological science are being merged into one another. The current century is destined evidently to make discoveries quite as important as the many splendid ones that form the glory of the nineteenth ; but they will be of far more direct human interest, inasmuch as they will elucidate the nature of life, feeling and thought, and will help to give man the same conscious control of the conditions making for his inner happiness as the discoveries m physical science have given him over the powers of external Nature. With perfect confidence it can be claimed that, instead of apprehending the approach of a period of scientific exhaustion and reaction we can rely on the great scientific movement of the nmeteeth century being carried on with wider sweep and bolder enterprise than ever.