Part 10

The results of such a training vary, of course, with the individual, and depend upon his personal peculiarities. A broad man is broadened by it; a narrow man shuts himself up within the limits of a specialty. To some extent specialization is necessary, but there is a wide difference between the man who sees only his own province and one who realizes its relations to other fields. The same distinction is found in commercial life, and with the same results. The specialist in money, in stocks, in iron, or in cotton may be just as narrow as the specialist in stars, or reactions, or insects, and know little or nothing of any subject outside his own. Neither narrowness nor breadth of view is monopolized by any vocation. The mere fact that men of science rarely devote their attention to accumulating wealth does not prove them to be unpractical. They are not, as a rule, careless or thriftless in money matters; they are as likely to handle their financial affairs intelligently as any one else, but their main business lies in other directions. If seldom a millionaire, the man of science is still more seldom a bankrupt. In wild speculation the so-called practical man takes the lead, and anything which bears the trade mark of electricity, from the electrical refining of sugar to the extraction of gold from sea water, can secure from otherwise shrewd financiers the support which a worker in science would contemptuously refuse to give. A few years ago the would-be rain-makers obtained the money for their experiments from men of business, and from Congress even, in spite of advice based upon scientific knowledge, and failure was the inevitable end. In that borderland between business and research, which is known as applied science, the scientific student is more practical than the financier. When both work together, wealth is produced, but the seedtime of abstract investigation always precedes the harvest. The commercial value of exact knowledge is often very great, but to the prospective investor this truth is not always evident.

The practical value of the scientific training is perhaps most fully recognized in Germany. There the importance of the investigator, the apparently abstract scholar, is thoroughly understood, and to his work the great industrial advance of Germany is largely attributable. In chemical and electrical industries this is particularly true, and their growth can be directly traced to the influence of the universities. The German professor is a man trained to research, and from among his students many of the best investigators are chosen for service in the factories. German competition in the commercial world is to-day the bugbear of other European countries, and its success is due, first of all, to the utilization of trained intelligences. In our own country the importance of applied science is fully realized and its achievements are beyond dispute, but the scholar as yet receives less consideration than the commercial expert. The latter is practical, the former is regarded as visionary. Accurate knowledge is a good thing, but rule-of-thumb experience is often thought to be better. It is only when knowledge and experience join hands that the highest practical results are attainable, the one factor tending to advance, the other to perpetuate, industry. The man of affairs is not a practical man until he appreciates the force of these propositions.

At bottom the scientific training is a training in clear thought, precise statement, accurate observation, the verification of evidence, and the ascertainment of truth. Why should its recipient be unfitted for practical things? Good administration, the effective transaction of business, implies system, exactness, the judgment of evidence upon its merits, and the prompt solution of problems as they arise, and to each of these requisites the scientific education is directly related. What other training is less likely to produce dreamers, or more likely to develop efficient men? The main distinction between the workers in science and men of other vocations is one of aim, a difference in ambition, perhaps a difference in the point of view. The scientific scholar seeks to discover and possibly to apply new truth; and after that his ambition is to win the recognition of his fellows, to gain reputation, rather than to acquire wealth. He may not be indifferent to the latter purpose, but it is not his chief end. It is difficult to do both things well.

For the administration of large interests, involving the control of men and the building-up of great institutions, men of science have over and over again demonstrated their fitness. In the scientific societies of the world they have shown their capacity for organization, and in the management of schools and colleges their ability has often been proved. Among the presidents of universities and technical schools who have been drawn from the ranks of science I may mention Eliot, of Harvard; Gilman, of the Johns Hopkins; Drown, of Lehigh; Jordan, of the Leland Stanford; Chamberlin, of Wisconsin; Morton, of the Stevens Institute; and Mendenhall, of the Worcester Polytechnic. The Institute of Technology in Boston has been directed successively by Rogers, Runkle, Walker, and Crafts; the Columbia School of Mines was built up by a group of scientific workers, aided by President Barnard; and the list might be lengthened almost indefinitely. Have these men fallen below the average of their fellows? Have they not shown at least as high administrative ability as has been found elsewhere? The mere statement of their names is a sufficient answer, and renders argument unnecessary. With them the scientific training has not been a disqualification, nor even a handicap; it has rather been to their advantage, for to it they owe much of the insight, the power to grasp great problems intelligently, the ability to interpret evidence, and the tendency to prompt and decisive action, without which successful administration is impossible.

Again, consider the scientific institutions of the world, the museums and observatories, and the various governmental organizations in which science is recognized. In our own country, the Smithsonian Institution and National Museum were built up by Henry and Baird, in spite of great and varied difficulties; the Coast Survey was created by Hassler and Bache; and the Geological Survey was developed by a group of men among whom Hayden, King, and Powell were pioneers. The last-named organization has been controlled from the beginning by men of science, and the Coast Survey has been weak only when under nonscientific management. The Commission of Fish and Fisheries owes its existence and a great part of its effectiveness to its creator, Baird; the Army Medical Museum and Library represents the executive genius of Billings; and in none of these institutions has partisan politics ever exerted an appreciable influence. No bureaus of the Government have been more wisely or more efficiently handled than those which men of science have controlled; in none have there been fewer errors or scandals; there is not one in which the essential purpose of its existence has been better fulfilled.

Instead, then, of excluding the scholar, the investigator, the man who knows, the man of scientific training, from his fair share of public responsibility, we should do well to call him into service more and more. He may be, he often is, averse to administrative work, for the reason that it interferes with his chosen occupation, and hinders the prosecution of research. But his training and his mental bias are both needed in public affairs, wherein the scientific method is too often unapplied. In European countries men of high scientific rank are frequently found in legislative bodies and ministries; men like Playfair, Roscoe, and Lubbock in England, Virchow in Germany, Quintino Sella in Italy, and Berthelot in France. With us in America the maker of speeches outranks the thinker in popular esteem, and is given duties to perform in which he may become ridiculous. Both in legislation and in diplomacy many questions arise which demand the most careful scientific treatment, or which can be answered only by thorough scientific knowledge, and many of these have been intrusted for settlement to men of no specific training whatever. Of late years we have had the fur-seal controversy, the question of forest reserves, the irrigation of our arid lands, problems of sanitation and water supply, and in each of these the man of science has played a part which was too often subordinate to that of the politician. In an ideal government the two should work together, each supplementing the peculiar ability of the other. Many details of the tariff, and a notable part of the coinage question, require scientific data for their proper settlement, but the true expert has not always been consulted. The result of this neglect is sometimes seen in courts of law, where questions of interpretation arise which might have been averted, obscurity in legislation being often due to the careless use of scientific terminology or to ignorance of the relations in science between two branches of industry. The voice of the trained investigator might well be heard in Congress, but his testimony now is limited to the committee room. Even there it is received with an attention which is too often mingled with incredulity. The myth of the dreamer, the visionary, is more than half believed.

The supposed type, then, is not a type, but an exception--a man of straw, which is hardly worth overthrowing. But the belief in it has been and still is mischievous, a hindrance to wise action, an obstacle to progress. The misconception has worked injury to science. These words of protest, therefore, are not wholly superfluous.

FORENOON AND AFTERNOON.

BY CHARLES F. DOWD, PH. D.

It is a fact of common observation, at different times of the year, that the forenoon and afternoon, as to daylight, are of unequal length. Along in later autumn the shortness of the afternoons is very noticeable, and the shortness of forenoons along in later winter. Whatever makes common facts more intelligible adds to the general intelligence and to the general good. It is to this end that the following brief statements are made.

Nothing is more evident than that the sun requires just as much time to go from the eastern horizon to the midday meridian as to go from that meridian to the western horizon. But, strange to say, there are but four days during the whole year in which the sun reaches the midday meridian at just twelve o’clock. The true noon point varies from about fifteen minutes before to about sixteen minutes after twelve o’clock. These extreme points in one set of variations fall in the first week of November and in the second week of February, not to designate exact days for years in general.

The calendars show that in the latitude of Saratoga (essentially Boston latitude) on November 3, 1898, the sun rose at 6.30 and set at five o’clock, thereby making the forenoon a half hour longer than the afternoon. On that day the sun reached the midday meridian at 11.45. On February 13, 1899, the sun rose at just seven o’clock and set at 5.30, thereby making the afternoon a half hour longer than the forenoon, and on this day the sun reached the midday meridian at 12.15. These are facts plainly open to general view, and therefore need no verifying.

The causes of the foregoing are not so apparent to common observation. It must be borne in mind that the mean or average solar day is the basis for all time measurements, therefore its exact length is of the greatest importance. Yet the general solar day, from which the average one is derived, is a very indefinite term as to its length. Its length in general may be defined, under view of the sun’s apparent motion, as the time extending from the instant that the sun’s center crosses any given meridian of the earth on one day to the instant that center crosses the same meridian on the following day--i. e., the time intervening between these two instants is the length of a solar day.

The motion of the sun, however, is only apparent; the actual motion is in the earth’s revolution upon its axis. We should have one day a year long if the earth did not revolve on its axis at all, since the revolution of the earth around the sun once a year would in the course of the year bring all sides facing the sun. Consequently the earth makes one more revolution upon its axis each year than the number of solar days in that year, and a little consideration of this fact will show that in each solar day the earth makes one full revolution on its axis and about 1/365 of another, which fractional addition is occasioned by one day’s progress of the earth along its orbit.

Another fact needs to be considered. Since the earth’s orbit is in the form of an ellipse, with the sun at one of the foci, the earth must pass nearer the sun in some parts of its orbit than in others. By the laws of gravity, when nearer, the attraction between the earth and sun is greater, and if this were not balanced by increased velocity along its orbit the earth would fall into the sun; and, on the other hand, when farther off this attraction is less, and if this were not balanced by a diminution of velocity along its orbit the earth would fly off into space. This varying velocity, together with other complications too technical for a magazine article, gives varying lengths of orbit to the several solar days of the year. If the earth’s orbit were laid out upon paper and, by astronomical calculations, an exact proportionate section were marked off for each solar day of the year, the variable lengths of orbit for the different days of the year would plainly appear to the eye.

But, as before explained, the time of a solar day is the time of one revolution of the earth upon its axis, together with the fractional part of another revolution occasioned by one day’s progress of the earth along its orbit. Then it must follow that as the daily sections of the orbit vary in length, the time of the solar day must vary in length. No clock could be made to keep the variable time of true solar days, and if this were possible, the hour, minute, etc., would be variable of length, and hence no standard for time measurements. But by working a simple arithmetical problem of addition and division an average length of day for the year may easily be found. This average day is the mean solar day adopted. Its time is arbitrary and exact, forming a perfect standard for all time measurements. From this the term _mean time_ gains its significance.

By referring to the foregoing earth’s orbit laid out on paper, with the true solar days marked off in sections of mathematical exactness, it will be seen that by dividing each section into two equal parts and marking the division point with red ink, the true noon point of each solar day in the year will be conspicuous upon the drawing, and in its proportionate relations in every way. If now we set a pair of dividers or compasses so that the opening shall reach over the exact space on the orbit of one half of the mean solar day, and beginning at the red noon point of one of the four days in the year when the true noon falls at just twelve o’clock--say December 24th--and step the dividers around on the orbit, making a blue point mark at each second step, then as the blue points vary from the red so will the mean time which our clocks keep vary from the true noon of each day of the year.

Variation in length of forenoon and afternoon, therefore, may be viewed by common intelligence not only as a fact but as a necessity.

PRESIDENT JORDAN’S “NEMINISM.”

OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT, LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY, PALO ALTO, CAL. POST OFFICE, STANFORD UNIVERSITY.

DEAR DR. YOUMANS:

The inclosed, from an anonymous but appreciative source, may interest you. It is doubtless true that the philosophy of Neminism goes back to India, through Hegel and Plato, but the high priestess does not know this. She made it all out of her own head.

Truly yours, DAVID S. JORDAN.

THE UNIVERSITY OF MENTIPHYSICS, LYNN, MASS., _December 6, 1899_.

_President David Starr Jordan, Leland Stanford University, California._

SIR: I have before me the last issue of one of our two or three great scientific magazines, in which Mr. Giddings lays down the exact method we are to follow in sociology, thereby creating the pleasing impression that hereafter he intends to stick to it himself. But, sir, I wish to say, as a student of “Neminism,” as you call it, that my emotions were far less agreeable on perusing your brilliant plagiarism, the doctrine of _Nihil nemini nocet_, an aphorism which apparently you wish to make rival the _Cogito ergo sum_ of the Cartesian philosophy. I will concede to you (I being, as it is perhaps necessary for me to remark, a literary person) the undoubted right all real literary persons have of appropriating everything of a literary nature that they can lay their hands upon; but, while we are in perfect harmony upon this occasion, in regard to that point, I regret to insist that the thing must be done judiciously--_that_ is the art. Any mere plebeian can accumulate facts--_that_ is the _raison d’être_ of the plebeian; his duty is to work--but the real ethereal literary man, such as the monthly magazines nourish, must disdain facts and theories and the truth, and must float in the pure, soft twilight of his own imagination while he writes about people who never existed, in a language which nobody can understand. Yet, sir, in your unblushing appropriation of the late Professor Hegel’s dictum of _Sein und nicht Sein sind dieselbe_ (which I presume you, sir, to exculpate yourself, will swear you do not understand), and in your changing that immortal antithesis to your _Nihil nemini nocet_--in doing all this I declare that you have violated one of the most sacred principles, in fact, the very essence of Neminism; for to say, as you have said, that nothing hurts nobody, is to say a very dull, prosaic, vulgar fact which any fool can understand; but to say that “to be and not to be are the same” is to say something that is not only very beautiful, but, what is far more to the point, is likewise utterly incomprehensible; yet to do this _is_ the essence of Neminism, as you yourself have shown.

As a confirmed Neminist glorying in his Neminism, as Pascal’s Father Joseph, the Jesuit, gloried in “interpretation” of the words “murder” and “charity,” I am, sir (and I hope my frequent use of this monosyllable will not annoy you, for the first Neminist, Plato, uses Ω Σωκρατες [Greek: Ô Sôkrates] quite as frequently, though his expression requires four times as much wind or space as mine), I say, then, that I am always anxious to be thought well of by people who are on top or are getting there, in order, to use your own undignified and cruel metaphor in the Rev. Mr. Lyman Abbott’s journal of news and Christianity, that I may continue “to hold down” my position as the janitor and Professor of Leibnitzian Monadology in the University of Mentiphysics. But there are times, sir, when even a feminist rises above his interest, and, like Richelieu in the play, exchanges the lion’s and the fox’s skins. In short, I beg to inform you that I believe that you, seeing the growing attachment of the vulgar mob for the _Wissenshaftliche Pädagogie_ of the Robinson Crusoeans or concentrationists, have had the thought to sap the foundations of their success by vulgarizing our noble monopoly of Neministic science, and I should not be at all surprised to see your name, after a little, as the editor of a “Journal of Psycho-Materno-Kinder Apperceptics,” or of a strictly American “Great Educator Series,” beginning with Pontiac and ending with Jim Fiske.

Or perhaps, sir, you are actuated by deeper motives. Our university has not yet received the complimentary copy of your work on Imperial Democracy, the Government probably holding it back until General Young can catch Mr. Aguinaldo, but I see by the publishers’ lists that it is out. Now, it is easy to see that if Imperial Democracy gets within a stone’s throw of China it will get _into_ China, and, with your knowledge of Aristotle’s Politics and the Highbinders in Chinatown, you can not have failed to have recognized that Neminism and Orientalism are very similar. To be or not to be; to be alive or to be dead; to be drunk or to be sober--’tis all the same for the people; ’tis _Nirvana_. You wish to vulgarize Neminism. What follows your success? Immediately every State will make it an obligatory study in the public schools, and when, in the distant future, we meet the Chinamen face to face, we will be ready to exterminate them or be exterminated by them; for it is an axiom of sociology, which it is to be hoped Mr. Giddings will see the value of and will in the next edition of his Social Euclid make number one, that when two societies completely differing in origin, history, manners, institutions, and laws come together they start in the more quickly to cut each other’s throats when they have a common idea in which they can locate a difference, and hence find a logical excuse to begin.

I would have preferred that our president had taken up this unpleasant task of criticising your mischievous efforts to vulgarize our beautiful science, which, like the true religion of the Egyptians, should be retained _sub rosa_ in the temples; but she, as you yourself have said, does not like controversial publicity, and has often remarked that our science is like the mushroom, for, though it is the child of darkness and Byzantian filth, it is eminently adapted to be retained by weak stomachs, while for others it may be nauseating. I am, sir, very respectfully,

ANACHARSIS PANGLOSS, _M. Plane_.

Though religiously refraining from introducing my own personality in the foregoing, it being a cardinal point in our science that it is good form to appear modest--_videri quam esse_, as was said of Cato--I am, nevertheless, obliged to observe that I am not at all in any way related to the Dr. Pangloss, LL. D., A. S. S., mentioned in the play of the Heir at Law, nor yet, though perhaps more spiritually akin, to that other Dr. Pangloss--Dr. Leibnitz Pangloss, the tutor of Candide mentioned by the late Monsieur Voltaire of happy memory. Dr. L. Pangloss, a fine old fellow at bottom, was engaged in showing how, in the best possible words, a cause always precedes its effect; for instance, Monsieur the Baron Thunder den Trockendorf has a nose, argues he--it will carry spectacles, hence the nose was created for spectacles, and spectacles are created. It is plain that Dr. L. Pangloss was a scientist. Now, I am a sociologist, and it is the hope of my life to fill the chair of Monadology in the new American university, where I intend to show that while the rich are becoming richer the poor will become richer than the rich in contemplating how much more satisfaction the rich get out of their riches than they, the poor, get out of their poverty. This, as you will at once recognize, is in the line of what Mr. Lester Ward calls Dynamic Sociology, and, though it is not the acme of the application of dynamics such as that which knocked Hebraism out of Saul of Tarsus, I beg to remind you that, until German science has made further progress in the application of electricity, we lack the means of producing the necessary phenomena by which alone such effects can be secured.

A. P.

Correspondence.

FAITH AND KNOWLEDGE.

_Editor Popular Science Monthly_: