A History of Science Volume V Part 8

Whichever way one turns in science, subjects are always found thus dovetailing into one another and refusing to be sharply outlined.

Nevertheless, here as elsewhere, there are theoretical bounds that suffice for purposes of definition, if not very rigidly lived up to in practice; and we are justified in thinking of the pathologist (perhaps I should say the pathological anatomist) as the investigator of disease who is directly concerned with effects rather than with causes, who aims directly at the diseased tissue itself and reasons only secondarily to the causes. His problem is: given a certain disease (if I may be permitted this personified form of expression), to find what tissues of the body are changed by it from the normal and in what manner changed.

It requires but a moment's reflection to make it clear that a certain crude insight into the solution of this problem, as regards all common diseases, must have been the common knowledge of medical men since the earliest times. Thus not even medical knowledge was needed to demonstrate that the tissues of an in: flamed part become red and swollen; and numerous other changes of diseased tissues are almost equally patent. But this species of knowledge, based on microscopic inspection, was very vague and untrustworthy, and it was only after the advent of the perfected microscope, some three-quarters of a century ago, that pathological anatomy began to have any proper claim to scientific rank. Indeed, it was not until about the year 1865 that the real clew was discovered which gave the same impetus to pathology that the demonstration of the germ theory of disease gave at about the same time to etiology, or the study of causes of disease. This clew consisted of the final demonstration that all organic action is in the last resort a question of cellular activities, and, specifically, that all abnormal changes in any tissues of the body, due to whatever disease, can consist of nothing more than the destruction, or the proliferation, or the alteration of the cells that compose that tissue.

That seems a simple enough proposition nowadays, but it was at once revolutionary and inspiring in the day of its original enunciation some forty years ago. The man who had made the discovery was a young German physician, professor in the University of Freiburg, by name Rudolph Virchow. The discovery made him famous, and from that day to this the name of Virchow has held somewhat the same position in the world of pathology that the name of Pasteur occupied in the realm of bacteriology. Virchow was called presently to a professorship in the University of Berlin. In connection with this chair he established his famous Inst.i.tute of Pathology, which has been the Mecca of all students of pathology ever since. He did a host of other notable things as well, among others, entering the field of politics, and becoming a recognized leader there no less than in science. Indeed, it seemed during the later decades of his life as if one encountered Virchow in whatever direction one turned in Berlin, and one feels that it was not without reason that his compatriots spoke of him as "the man who knows everything." To the end he retained all the alertness of intellect and the energy of body that had made him what he was. One found him at an early hour in the morning attending to the routine of his hospital duties, his lectures, and clinical demonstrations. These finished, he rushed off, perhaps to his parliamentary duties; thence to a meeting of the Academy of Sciences, or to preside at the Academy of Medicine or at some other scientific gathering. And in intervals of these diversified pursuits he was besieged ever by a host of private callers, who sought his opinion, his advice, his influence in some matter of practical politics, of statecraft, or of science, or who, perhaps, had merely come the length of the continent that they might grasp the hand of the "father of pathology."

In whatever capacity one sought him out, provided the seeking were not too presumptuous, one was sure to find the great savant approachable, courteous, even cordial. A man of multifarious affairs, he impressed one as having abundance of time for them all, and to spare. There is a leisureliness about the seeming habit of existence on the Continent that does not pertain in America, and one felt the flavor of it quite as much in the presence of this great worker as among those people who from our stand-point seem never really to work at all. This is to a certain extent explained if one visited Virchow in his home, and found to his astonishment that the world-renowned physician, statesman, pathologist, anthropologist was domiciled in a little apartment of the most modest equipment, up two flights, in a house of most unpretentious character.

Everything was entirely respectable, altogether comfortable, to be sure; but it was a grade of living which a man of corresponding position in America could not hold to without finding himself quite out of step with his confreres and the subject of endless comment. But in this city of universal apartment-house occupancy and relatively low average of display in living it is quite otherwise. Virchow lived on the same plane, generally speaking, with the other scientists of Europe; it is only from the American standpoint that there is any seeming disparity between his fame and his material station in life; nor do I claim this as a merit of the American stand-point.

Be that as it may, however, our present concern lies not with these matters, but with Virchow the pathologist and teacher. To see the great scientist at his best in this role, it was necessary to visit the Inst.i.tute of Pathology on a Thursday morning at the hour of nine. On the morning of our visit we found the students already a.s.sembled and gathered in cl.u.s.ters all about the room, examining specimens of morbid anatomy, under guidance of various laboratory a.s.sistants. This was to give them a general familiarity with the appearances of the disease-products that would be described to them in the ensuing lecture.

But what is most striking about the room was the very unique method of arrangement of the desk or table on which the specimens rested. It was virtually a long-drawn-out series of desks winding back and forth throughout the entire room, but all united into one, so that a specimen pa.s.sed along the table from end to end will make a zigzag tour of the room, pa.s.sing finally before each person in the entire audience. To facilitate such transit, there was a little iron railway all along the centre of the table, with miniature turn-tables at the corners, along which microscopes, with adjusted specimens for examination, might be conveyed without danger of maladjustment or injury. This may seem a small detail, but it is really an important auxiliary in the teaching by demonstration with specimens for which this room was peculiarly intended. The ordinary lectures of Professor Virchow were held in a neighboring amphitheatre of conventional type.

Of a sudden there was a hush in the hum of voices, as a little, thin, frail-seeming man entered and stepped briskly to the front of the room and upon the low platform before the blackboard in the corner. A moment's pause for the students to take their places, and the lecturer, who of course was Virchow himself, began, in a clear, conversational voice, to discourse on the topic of the day, which chanced to be the formation of clots in blood-vessels. There was no particular attempt at oratory; rather the lecturer proceeded as if talking man to man, with no thought but to make his meaning perfectly clear. He began at once putting specimens in circulation, as supplied on his demand by his a.s.sistants from a rather grewsome-looking collection before him. Now he paused to chaff the a.s.sistant who was making the labels, poking good-humored jokes at his awkwardness, but with no trace of sting. Again he became animated, his voice raised a little, his speech more vehement, as he advanced his own views on some contested theory or refuted the objections that some opponent had urged against him, always, however, with a smile lurking about his eyes or openly showing on his lips.

Constantly the lecturer turned to the blackboard to ill.u.s.trate with colored, crayons such points of his discourse as the actual specimens in circulation might leave obscure. Everything must be made plain to every hearer or he would not be satisfied. One can but contrast such teaching as this with the lectures of the average German professor, who seems not to concern himself in the least as to whether anything is understood by any one. But Virchow had the spirit of the true teacher. He had the air of loving his task, old story as it was to him. Most of his auditors were mere students, yet he appealed to them as earnestly as if they were a.s.sociates and equals. He seemed to try to put himself on their level--to make his thought near to them. Physically he was near to them as he talked, the platform on which he stood being but a few inches in height, and such physical nearness conduces to a familiarity of discourse that is best fitted for placing lecturer and hearers _en rapport_. All in all, appealing as it does almost equally to ear and eye, it is a type of what a lecturer should be. Not a student there but went away with an added fund of information, which is far more than can be said of most of the lectures in a German university.

Needless to say, there are other departments to the Inst.i.tute of Pathology. There are collections of beautifully preserved specimens for examination; rooms for practical experimentation in all phases of the subject, the chemical side included; but these are not very different from the similar departments of similar inst.i.tutions everywhere. What was unique and characteristic about this inst.i.tution was the personality of the director. Now he is gone, but his influence will not soon be forgotten. The pupils of a great teacher are sure to carry forward the work somewhat in the spirit of the master for at least a generation.

THE BERLIN INSt.i.tUTE OP HYGIENE

I purposely refrain from entering into any details as to the character of the technical work done at the Virchow Inst.i.tute, because the subject of pathology, despite its directly practical bearings, is in itself necessarily somewhat removed from the knowledge of the general reader.

One cannot well understand the details of changes in tissues under abnormal conditions unless one first understands the normal conditions of the tissues themselves, and such knowledge is reserved for the special students of anatomy. For the nonprofessional observer the interest of the Virchow Inst.i.tute must lie in its general scope rather than in the details of the subjects there brought under investigation, which latter have, indeed, of necessity, a somewhat grewsome character despite the beneficent results that spring from them. It is quite otherwise, however, with the work of the allied inst.i.tution of which I now come to speak. The Inst.i.tute of Hygiene deals with topics not very remote from those studied in the Virchow Inst.i.tute, part of its work, indeed, falling clearly within the scope of pathology; but it differs in being clearly comprehensible to the general public and of immediate and tangible interest from the most strictly utilitarian stand-point, hygiene being, in effect, the tangible link between the more abstract medical sciences and the affairs of every-day life.

The Inst.i.tute of Hygiene has also the interest that always attaches to a.s.sociation with a famous name, for it was here that Professor Koch made the greater part of those investigations which made his name the best known, next to that of Pasteur, of any in the field of bacteriology.

In particular, the researches on the cholera germ, and those even more widely heralded researches that led to the discovery of the bacillus of tuberculosis, and the development of the remedy tuberculin, of which so much was at first expected, were made by Professor Koch in the laboratories of the antiquated building which was then and is still the seat of the Inst.i.tute of Hygiene. More recently Professor Koch has severed his connection with the inst.i.tution after presiding over it for many years, having now a semi-private laboratory just across from the Virchow Inst.i.tute, in connection with the Charite Hospital; but one still thinks of the Inst.i.tute of Hygiene as peculiarly the "Koch Inst.i.tute" without injustice, so fully does its work follow the lines laid out for it by the great leader.

But however much the stamp of any individual personality may rest upon the inst.i.tute, it is officially a department of the university, just as is the Virchow Inst.i.tute. Like the latter, also, its local habitation is an antiquated building, strangely at variance, according to American ideas, with its reputation, though by no means noteworthy in this regard in the case of a German inst.i.tution. It is situated in a part of the city distant from any other department of the university, and there is nothing about it exteriorly to distinguish it from other houses of the solid block in which it stands. Interiorly, it reminds one rather of a converted dwelling than a laboratory proper. Its rooms are well enough adapted to their purpose, but they give one the impression of a makeshift. The smallest American college would be ill-satisfied with such an equipment for any department of its work. Yet in these dingy quarters has been accomplished some of the best work in the new science of bacteriology that our century will have to boast.

The actual equipment of the bacteriological laboratory here is not, indeed, quite as meagre as it seems at first, there being numerous rooms, scattered here and there, which in the aggregate give opportunity for work to a large number of investigators, though no single room makes an impressive appearance. There is one room, however, large enough to give audience to a considerable cla.s.s, and here lectures were given by Professor Koch and continue to be given by his successors to the special students of bacteriology who come from all over the world, as well as to the university students who take the course as a part of their regular medical curriculum. In regard to this feature of its work, the Inst.i.tute of Hygiene differs in no essential respect from the Pasteur Inst.i.tute and other laboratories of bacteriology. The same general routine of work pertains: the patient cultivation of the minute organisms in various mediums, their careful staining by special processes, and their investigation under the microscope mark the work of the bacteriologist everywhere. Many details of the special methods of culture or treatment originated here with Professor Koch, but such matters are never kept secret in science, so one may see them practised quite as generally and as efficiently in other laboratories as in this one. Indeed, it may frankly be admitted that, aside from its historical a.s.sociations with the pioneer work in bacteriology, which will always make it memorable, there is nothing about the bacteriological laboratory here to give it distinction over hundreds of similar ones elsewhere; while in point of technical equipment, as already noted, it is remarkable rather for what it lacks than for what it presents.

The department of bacteriology, however, is only one of several important features of the inst.i.tute. One has but to ascend another flight of stairs to pa.s.s out of the sphere of the microbe and enter a department where attention is directed to quite another field. We have now come to what may be considered the laboratory of hygiene proper, since here the investigations have to do directly with the functionings of the human body in their relations to the every-day environment.

Here again one is struck with the meagre equipment with which important results may be attained by patient and skilled investigators. In only one room does one find a really elaborate piece of apparatus. This exceptional mechanism consists essentially of a cabinet large enough to give comfortable lodgment to a human subject--a cabinet with walls of peculiar structure, partly of gla.s.s, and connected by various pipes with sundry mysterious-seeming retorts. This single apparatus, however, is susceptible of being employed for the investigation of an almost endless variety of questions pertaining to the functionings of the human body considered as a working mechanism.

Thus, for example, a human subject to be experimented upon may remain for an indefinite period within this cabinet, occupied in various ways, taking physical exercise, reading, engaged in creative mental labor, or sleeping. Meantime, air is supplied for respiration in measured quant.i.ties, and of a precisely determined composition, as regards chemical impurities, moisture, and temperature. The air after pa.s.sing through the chamber being again a.n.a.lyzed, the exact const.i.tuents added to it as waste products of the human machine in action under varying conditions are determined. It will readily be seen that by indefinitely varying the conditions of such experiments a great variety of data may be secured as to the exact physiological accompaniments of various bodily and mental activities. Such data are of manifest importance to the physiologist and pathologist on the one hand, while at the same time having a direct bearing on such eminently practical topics as the construction of shops, auditoriums, and dwellings in reference to light, heat, and ventilation. It remains only for practical architecture to take advantage of the unequivocal data thus placed at its disposal--an opportunity of which practical architecture, in Germany as elsewhere on the Continent, has. .h.i.therto been very slow to avail itself.

THE MUSEUM OF HYGIENE

The practical lessons thus given in the laboratory are supplemented in an even more tangible manner, because in a way more accessible to the public, in another department of the inst.i.tution which occupies a contiguous building, and is known as the Museum of Hygiene. This, unlike the other departments of the inst.i.tute, is open to the general public on certain days of each week, and it offers a variety of exhibits of distinctly novel character and of high educational value. The general character of the exhibits may be inferred from the name, but perhaps the scope is even wider than might be expected. In a word, it may be said that scarcely anything having to do with practical hygiene has been overlooked. Thus one finds here numberless models of dwelling-houses, showing details of lighting, heating, and ventilation; models not merely of individual dwellings, but also of school-buildings, hospitals, asylums, and even prisons. Sometimes the models represent merely ideal buildings, but more generally they reproduce in miniature actual habitations. In the case of the public buildings, the model usually includes not merely the structures themselves but the surroundings--lawns, drives, trees, out-buildings--so that one can get a very good idea of the more important hospitals, asylums, and prisons of Germany by making a tour of the Museum of Hygiene. Regarding the details of structure, one can actually gain a fuller knowledge in many cases than he could obtain by actual visits to the original inst.i.tutions themselves.

The same thing is true of various other features of the subjects represented. Thus there is a very elaborate model here exhibited of the famous Berlin system of sewage-disposal. As is well known, the essential features of this system consist of the drainage of sewage into local reservoirs, from which it is forced by pumps, natural drainage not sufficing, to distant fields, where it is distributed through tile pipes laid in a network about a yard beneath the surface of the soil. The fields themselves, thus rendered fertile by the waste products of the city, are cultivated, and yield a rich harvest of vegetables and grains of every variety suitable to the climate. The visitor to this field sees only rich farms and market-gardens under ordinary process of cultivation. The system of pipes by which the land is fertilized is as fully hidden from his view as are, for example, the tributary sewage-pipes beneath the city pavements. The average visitor to Berlin knows nothing, of course, about one or the other, and goes away, as he came, ignorant of the important fact that Berlin has reached a better solution of the great sewage problem than has been attained by any other large city. Such, at least, is likely to be the case unless the sight-seer chance to pay a visit to the Museum of Hygiene, in which case a few minutes' inspection of the model there will make the matter entirely clear to him. It is to be regretted that the authorities of other large cities do not make special visits to Berlin for this purpose; though it should be added that some of them have done so, and that the Berlin system of "ca.n.a.lization" has been adopted in various places in America. But many others might wisely follow their example, notably the Parisians, whose sewerage system, despite the boasted exhibition ca.n.a.l-sewer, is, like so many other things Parisian, of the most primitive character and a reproach to present-day civilization.

It may be added that there are plenty of things exhibited in this museum which the Germans themselves might study to advantage, for it must be understood that the other hygienic conditions pertaining to Berlin are by no means all on a par with the high modern standard of the sewerage system. In the matter of ventilation, for example, one may find admirable models in the museum, showing just how the dwelling and shop and school-room should make provision for a proper supply of pure air for their occupants. But if one goes out from the museum and searches in the actual dwelling or shop or school-room for the counterparts of these models, one will be sorely puzzled where to find them. The general impression which a casual inspection will leave in his mind is that the word ventilation must be as meaningless to the German mind as it is, for example, to the mind of a Frenchman or an Italian. This probably is not quite just, since the German has at least reached the stage of having museum models of ventilated houses, thus proving that the idea does exist, even though latent, in his mental equipment, whereas the other continental nationalities seem not to have reached even this incipient stage of progress. All over Europe the people fear a current of air as if veritable miasm must lurk in it. They seem quite oblivious to any systematic necessity for replenishing the oxygen supply among large a.s.semblies, as any one can testify who has, for example, visited their theatres or schools. And as to the private dwellings, after making them as nearly air-tight as practicable, they endeavor to preserve the _status quo_ as regards air supply seemingly from season to season. They even seem to have pa.s.sed beyond a mere negative regard for the subject of fresh air, inasmuch as they will bravely a.s.sure you that to sleep in a room with an open window will surely subject you to the penalty of inflamed eyes.

In a country like France, where the open fireplace is the usual means employed to modify the temperature (I will not say warm the room), the dwellings do of necessity get a certain amount of ventilation, particularly since the windows are not usually of the best construction.

But the German, with his nearly air-tight double windows and his even more nearly sealed tile stove, spends the winter in an atmosphere suggestive of the descriptions that arctic travellers give us of the air in the hut of an Eskimo. It is clear, then, that the models in the Museum of Hygiene have thus far failed of the proselyting purpose for which they were presumably intended. How it has chanced that the inhabitants of the country maintain so high an average of robust health after this open defiance is a subject which the physiological department of the Inst.i.tute of Hygiene might well investigate.

Even though the implied precepts of the Museum of Hygiene are so largely disregarded, however, it must be admitted that the existence of the museum is a hopeful sign. It is a valuable educational inst.i.tution, and if its salutary lessons are but slowly accepted by the people, they cannot be altogether without effect. At least the museum proves that there are leaders in science here who have got beyond the range of eighteenth-century thought in matters of practical living, and the sign is hopeful for the future, though its promise will perhaps not be fulfilled in our generation.

VII. SOME UNSOLVED SCIENTIFIC PROBLEMS

IN recent chapters we have witnessed a marvellous development in many branches of pure science. In viewing so wonderfully diversified a field, it has of course been impossible to dwell upon details, or even to glance at every minor discovery. At best one could but summarize the broad sweep of progress somewhat as a battle might be described by a distant eye-witness, telling of the general direction of action, of the movements of large ma.s.ses, the names of leaders of brigades and divisions, but necessarily ignoring the lesser fluctuations of advance or recession and the individual gallantry of the rank and file. In particular, interest has centred upon the storming of the various special strongholds of ignorant or prejudiced opposition, which at last have been triumphantly occupied by the band of progress. In each case where such a stronghold has fallen, the victory has been achieved solely through the destructive agency of newly discovered or newly marshalled facts--the only weapons which the warrior of science seeks or cares for.

Facts must be marshalled, of course, about the guidon of a hypothesis, but that guidon can lead on to victory only when the facts themselves support it. Once planted victoriously on the conquered ramparts the hypothesis becomes a theory--a generalization of science--marking a fresh coign of vantage, which can never be successfully a.s.sailed unless by a new host of antagonistic facts. Such generalizations, with the events leading directly up to them, have chiefly occupied our attention.

But a moment's reflection makes it clear that the battle of science, thus considered, is ever shifting ground and never ended. Thus at any given period there are many unsettled skirmishes under way; many hypotheses are yet only struggling towards the stronghold of theory, perhaps never to attain it; in many directions the hosts of antagonistic facts seem so evenly matched that the hazard of war appears uncertain; or, again, so few facts are available that as yet no attack worthy the name is possible. Such unsettled controversies as these have, for the most part, been ignored in our survey of the field. But it would not be fair to conclude our story without adverting to them, at least in brief; for some of them have to do with the most comprehensive and important questions with which science deals, and the aggregate number of facts involved in these unfinished battles is often great, even though as yet the marshalling has not led to final victory for any faction. In some cases, doubtless, the right hypothesis is actually in the field, but its supremacy not yet conclusively proved--perhaps not to be proved for many years or decades to come. Some of the chief scientific results of the nineteenth century have been but the gaining of supremacy for hypotheses that were mere forlorn hopes, looked on with general contempt, if at all heeded, when the eighteenth century came to a close--witness the doctrines of the great age of the earth, of the immateriality of heat, of the undulatory character of light, of chemical atomicity, of organic evolution. Contrariwise, the opposite ideas to all of these had seemingly a safe supremacy until the new facts drove them from the field. Who shall say, then, what forlorn hope of to-day's science may not be the conquering host of to-morrow? All that one dare attempt is to cite the pretensions of a few hypotheses that are struggling over the still contested ground.

SOLAR AND TELLURIC PROBLEMS

Our sun being only a minor atom of the stellar pebble, solar problems in general are of course stellar problems also. But there are certain special questions regarding which we are able to interrogate the sun because of his proximity, and which have, furthermore, a peculiar interest for the residents of our little globe because of our dependence upon this particular star. One of the most far-reaching of these is as to where the sun gets the heat that he gives off in such liberal quant.i.ties. We have already seen that Dr. Mayer, of conservation-of-energy fame, was the first to ask this question. As soon as the doctrine of the persistence and convertibility of energy was grasped, about the middle of the century, it became clear that this was one of the most puzzling of questions. It did not at all suffice to answer that the sun is a ball of fire, for computation showed that, at the present rate of heat-giving, if the sun were a solid ma.s.s of coal, he would be totally consumed in about five thousand years. As no such decrease in size as this implies had taken place within historic times, it was clear that some other explanation must be sought.

Dr. Mayer himself hit upon what seemed a tenable solution at the very outset. Starting from the observed fact that myriads of tiny meteorites are hurled into the earth's atmosphere daily, he argued that the sun must receive these visitants in really enormous quant.i.ties--sufficient, probably, to maintain his temperature at the observed limits. There was nothing at all unreasonable about this a.s.sumption, for the amount of energy in a swiftly moving body capable of being transformed into heat if the body be arrested is relatively enormous. Thus it is calculated that a pound of coal dropped into the sun from the mathematician's favorite starting-point, infinity, would produce some six thousand times the heat it could engender if merely burned at the sun's surface. In other words, if a little over two pounds of material from infinity were to fall into each square yard of the sun's surface each hour, his observed heat would be accounted for; whereas almost seven tons per square yard of stationary fuel would be required each hour to produce the same effect.

In view of the pelting which our little earth receives, it seemed not an excessive requisition upon the meteoric supply to suppose that the requisite amount of matter may fall into the sun, and for a time this explanation of his incandescence was pretty generally accepted. But soon astronomers began to make calculations as to the amount of matter which this a.s.sumption added to our solar system, particularly as it aggregated near the sun in the converging radii, and then it was clear that no such ma.s.s of matter could be there without interfering demonstrably with the observed course of the interior planets. So another source of the sun's energy had to be sought. It was found forthwith by that other great German, Helmholtz, who pointed out that the falling matter through which heat may be generated might just as well be within the substance of the sun as without--in other words, that contraction of the sun's heated body is quite sufficient to account for a long-sustained heat-supply which the mere burning of any known substance could not approach.

Moreover the amount of matter thus falling towards the sun's centre being enormous--namely, the total substance of the sun--a relatively small amount of contraction would be theoretically sufficient to keep the sun's furnace at par, so to speak.

At first sight this explanation seemed a little puzzling to many laymen and some experts, for it seemed to imply, as Lord Kelvin pointed out, that the sun contracts because it is getting cooler, and gains heat because it contracts. But this feat is not really as paradoxical as it seems, for it is not implied that there is any real gain of heat in the sun's ma.s.s as a whole, but quite the reverse. All that is sought is an explanation of a maintenance of heat-giving capacity relatively unchanged for a long, but not an interminable, period. Indeed, exactly here comes in the novel and startling feature of. Helmholtz's calculation. According to Mayer's meteoric hypothesis, there were no data at hand for any estimate whatever as to the sun's permanency, since no one could surmise what might be the limits of the meteoric supply.

But Helmholtz's estimate implied an incandescent body cooling--keeping up a somewhat equable temperature through contraction for a time, but for a limited time only; destined ultimately to become liquid, solid; to cool below the temperature of incandescence--to die. Not only so, but it became possible to calculate the limits of time within which this culmination would probably occur. It was only necessary to calculate the total amount of heat which could be generated by the total ma.s.s of our solar system in falling together to the sun's centre from "infinity" to find the total heat-supply to be drawn upon. a.s.suming, then, that the present observed rate of heat-giving has been the average maintained in the past, a simple division gives the number of years for which the original supply is adequate. The supply will be exhausted, it will be observed, when the ma.s.s comes into stable equilibrium as a solid body, no longer subject to contraction, about the sun's centre--such a body, in short, as our earth is at present.

This calculation was made by Lord Kelvin, Professor Tait, and others, and the result was one of the most truly dynamitic surprises of the century. For it transpired that, according to mathematics, the entire limit of the sun's heat-giving life could not exceed something like twenty-five millions of years. The publication of that estimate, with the appearance of authority, brought a veritable storm about the heads of the physicists. The entire geological and biological worlds were up in arms in a trice. Two or three generations before, they hurled brickbats at any one who even hinted that the solar system might be more than six thousand years old; now they jeered in derision at the attempt to limit the life-bearing period of our globe to a paltry fifteen or twenty millions.

The controversy as to solar time thus raised proved one of the most curious and interesting scientific disputations of the century. The scene soon shifted from the sun to the earth; for a little reflection made it clear that the data regarding the sun alone were not sufficiently definite. Thus Dr. Croll contended that if the parent bodies of the sun had chanced to be "flying stars" before collision, a vastly greater supply of heat would have been engendered than if the matter merely fell together. Again, it could not be overlooked that a host of meteors are falling into the sun, and that this source of energy, though not in itself sufficient to account for all the heat in question, might be sufficient to vitiate utterly any exact calculations.

Yet again, Professor Lockyer called attention to another source of variation, in the fact that the chemical combination of elements. .h.i.therto existing separately must produce large quant.i.ties of heat, it being even suggested that this source alone might possibly account for all the present output. On the whole, then, it became clear that the contraction theory of the sun's heat must itself await the demonstration of observed shrinkage of the solar disk, as viewed by future generations of observers, before taking rank as an incontestable theory, and that computations as to time based solely on this hypothesis must in the mean time be viewed askance.

But the time controversy having taken root, new methods were naturally found for testing it. The geologists sought to estimate the period of time that must have been required for the deposit of the sedimentary rocks now observed to make up the outer crust of the earth. The amount of sediment carried through the mouth of a great river furnishes a clew to the rate of denudation of the area drained by that river. Thus the studies of Messrs. Humphreys and Abbot, made for a different purpose, show that the average level of the territory drained by the Mississippi is being reduced by about one foot in six thousand years. The sediment is, of course, being piled up out in the Gulf at a proportionate rate.

If, then, this be a.s.sumed to be an average rate of denudation and deposit in the past, and if the total thickness of sedimentary deposits of past ages were known, a simple calculation would show the age of the earth's crust since the first continents were formed. But unfortunately these "ifs" stand mountain-high here, all the essential factors being indeterminate. Nevertheless, the geologists contended that they could easily make out a case proving that the constructive and destructive work still in evidence, to say nothing of anterior revolutions, could not have been accomplished in less than from twenty-five to fifty millions of years.

This computation would have carried little weight with the physicists had it not chanced that another computation of their own was soon made which had even more startling results. This computation, made by Lord Kelvin, was based on the rate of loss of heat by the earth. It thus resembled the previous solar estimate in method. But the result was very different, for the new estimate seemed to prove that a period of from one hundred to two hundred millions of years has elapsed since the final crust of the earth formed.

With this all controversy ceased, for the most grasping geologist or biologist would content himself with a fraction of that time. But the case for the geologist was to receive yet another prop from the studies of radio-activity, which seem to prove that the atom of matter has in store a tremendous, supply of potential energy which may be drawn on in a way to vitiate utterly all the computations to which I have just referred. Thus a particle of radium is giving out heat incessantly in sufficient quant.i.ty to raise its own weight of water to the boiling-point in an hour. The demonstrated wide distribution of radio-active matter--making it at least an open question whether all matter does not possess this property in some degree--has led to the suggestion that the total heat of the sun may be due to radio-active matter in its substance. Obviously, then, all estimates of the sun's age based on the heat-supply must for the present be held quite in abeyance.

What is more to the point, however, is the fact, which these varying estimates have made patent, that computations of the age of the earth based on any data at hand are little better than rough guesses. Long before the definite estimates were undertaken, geologists had proved that the earth is very, very old, and it can hardly be said that the attempted computations have added much of definiteness to that proposition. They have, indeed, proved that the period of time to be drawn upon is not infinite; but the nebular hypothesis, to say nothing of common-sense, carried us as far as that long ago.

If the computations in question have failed of their direct purpose, however, they have been by no means lacking in important collateral results. To mention but one of these, Lord Kelvin was led by this controversy over the earth's age to make his famous computation in which he proved that the telluric structure, as a whole, must have at least the rigidity of steel in order to resist the moon's tidal pull as it does. Hopkins had, indeed, made a somewhat similar estimate as early as 1839, proving that the earth's crust must be at least eight hundred or a thousand miles in thickness; but geologists had utterly ignored this computation, and the idea of a thin crust on a fluid interior had continued to be the orthodox geological doctrine. Since Lord Kelvin's estimate was made, his claim that the final crust of the earth could not have formed until the ma.s.s was solid throughout, or at least until a honeycomb of solid matter had been bridged up from centre to circ.u.mference, has gained pretty general acceptance. It still remains an open question, however, as to what proportion the lacunas of molten matter bear at the present day to the solidified portions, and therefore to what extent the earth will be subject to further shrinkage and attendant surface contortions. That some such lacunae do exist is demonstrated daily by the phenomena of volcanoes. So, after all, the crust theory has been supplanted by a compromise theory rather than completely overthrown, and our knowledge of the condition of the telluric depths is still far from definite. If so much uncertainty attends these fundamental questions as to the earth's past and present, it is not strange that open problems as to her future are still more numerous. We have seen how, according to Professor Darwin's computations, the moon threatens to come back to earth with destructive force some day. Yet Professor Darwin himself urges that there are elements of fallibility in the data involved that rob the computation of all certainty. Much the same thing is true of perhaps all the estimates that have been made as to the earth's ultimate fate. Thus it has been suggested that, even should the sun's heat not forsake us, our day will become month-long, and then year-long; that all the water of the globe must ultimately filter into its depths, and all the air fly off into s.p.a.ce, leaving our earth as dry and as devoid of atmosphere as the moon; and, finally, that ether-friction, if it exist, or, in default of that, meteoric friction, must ultimately bring the earth back to the sun. But in all these prognostications there are possible compensating factors that vitiate the estimates and leave the exact results in doubt. The last word of the cosmic science of our generation is a prophecy of evil--if annihilation be an evil. But it is left for the science of another generation to point out more clearly the exact terms in which the prophecy is most likely to be fulfilled.

PHYSICAL PROBLEMS

In regard to all these cosmic and telluric problems, it will be seen, there is always the same appeal to one central rule of action--the law of gravitation. When we turn from macrocosm to microcosm it would appear as if new forces of interaction were introduced in the powers of cohesion and of chemical action of molecules and atoms. But Lord Kelvin has argued that it is possible to form such a conception of the forms and s.p.a.ce relations of the ultimate particles of matter that their mutual attractions may be explained by invoking that same law of gravitation which holds the stars and planets in their course. What, then, is this all-compa.s.sing power of gravitation which occupies so central a position in the scheme of mechanical things?

The simple answer is that no man knows. The wisest physicist of to-day will a.s.sure you that he knows absolutely nothing of the why of gravitation--that he can no more explain why a stone tossed into the air falls back to earth than can the boy who tosses the stone. But while this statement puts in a nutsh.e.l.l the scientific status of explanations of gravitation, yet it is not in human nature that speculative scientists should refrain from the effort to explain it. Such efforts have been made; yet, on the whole, they are surprisingly few in number; indeed, there are but two that need claim our attention here, and one of these has hardly more than historical interest. One of these is the so-called ultramundane-corpuscle hypothesis of Le Sage; the other is based on the vortex theory of matter.

The theory of Le Sage a.s.sumes that the entire universe is filled with infinitely minute particles flying in right lines in every direction with inconceivable rapidity. Every ma.s.s of tangible matter in the universe is incessantly bombarded by these particles, but any two non-contiguous ma.s.ses (whether separated by an infinitesimal s.p.a.ce or by the limits of the universe) are mutually shielded by one another from a certain number of the particles, and thus impelled towards one another by the excess of bombardment on their opposite sides. What applies to two ma.s.ses applies also, of course, to any number of ma.s.ses--in short, to all the matter in the universe. To make the hypothesis workable, so to say, it is necessary to a.s.sume that the "ultramundane" particles are possessed of absolute elasticity, so that they rebound from one another on collision without loss of speed. It is also necessary to a.s.sume that all tangible matter has to an almost unthinkable degree a sievelike texture, so that the vast proportion of the coercive particles pa.s.s entirely through the body of any ma.s.s they encounter--a star or world, for example--without really touching any part of its actual substance.

This a.s.sumption is necessary because gravitation takes no account of mere corporeal bulk, but only of ma.s.s or ultimate solidarity. Thus a very bulky object may be so closely meshed that it r.e.t.a.r.ds relatively few of the corpuscles, and hence gravitates with relative feebleness--or, to adopt a more familiar mode of expression, is light in weight.