The Advance of Science
New Pathways in Science. By Sir Arthur Eddington. (Cam- bridge University Press. 10s. 6d.)
Tom.Anizrico Science has .been a dangerous game and disreputable to boot. It partook of literary piracy, for it was done against the wish of the specialists who produced science. Their objection was not merely that here was an outsider putting into plain language what, if so put, must be mis- representational. The specialists were specialists because they found sufficiently interesting changes which to the ordinary man were insignificant. The popularizer wanted to had the human interest, the " life-size " scale of importance in their work. He believed, and not without some truth, that, in spite of the smallness in which it precipitated, science did make a great difference and would make more. This atti- tude was repugnant to the specialist. For he was not merely indifferent to changes which • could affect the man in the street : he was inclined to enjoy negative results. • He was pleased when his researches showedtthrit here was a subject which could only interest an expert, and when what the outsider hoped was going•to end in ptibliely important results failed to do so. For then he was sure that he would continue to be left atone while his- work remained safely below any limit of use at which- public interest might be tempted to interfere.
The situation is radically changed today. The purest of scientists, the Physicists, have actually themselves approached the public' and begun to show how their science, though the most abstract, may- bear upon ordinary thinking and living. Eminent mathematicians, Sir Arthur Eddington, Sir James Jeans, Earl Russell, Dr. Whitehead and Professor Dingle, have Vied-with each other as in the past great classical scholars have competed—how best to render in the vernacular and with popular lucidity the exalted tongue they speak among themselves. Nor has the Continent lagged behind. Max Planck, Bohr, Weyl have put the implications of higher mathe- matics and advanced physics in front of the ordinary un- mathematical reader. No doubt this is due to a feeling which no scientist can escape. He has to live his life as much as any layman and so he is compelled to consider whether his discoveries may have any bearing on life. He is under a social obligation to say whether he thinks that what he finds has any relation to thought and action. But this change, it would seem, has also been provoked by another and more professional feeling. The physicists themselves seem to consider that their science may have advanced so fast that they themselves are now compelled for the sake of their own thought to see how far their constructions bear any longer a valid relationship to ordinary reality. They see whether what they have thought in. mathematical symbols can be put into ordinary speech as an artist will stop painting and, taking a mirror, judge if his composition is keeping its form by looking at the reflection.
A new book by Sir Arthur Eddington is therefore an event which will disturb two worlds. The physicists, though no longer . denying that this is a necessary scientific task, will be anxious to know whether his vernacular rendering is what they themselves would have given, granted they had been possessed of his power over English.. The public will be anxious to know how far the front has advanced—it is now six years—since this master last reviewed it.-
, The change of title is probably in itself indicative of the speed of advance. - Six years ago we had The Nature of the Physical .World. Today. we are .given New Pathways in Science. The new volume's name suggests not only that the advance is still being pressed, but that we. must give up expecting the front again to solidify. That impression grows as the book is read. Sir Arthur begins again with the problem of the seer and the seen, that initial psychophysical task of discrimination between the world we see—what scientists have called data—and what may be the original impulse which sends the, message which we decode. He uses to describe -those who have yet to make this essential distinction the happy simile of one who on receiving a telegram thinks the writing to .be that of the sender. Next he takes us through the new units of matter in a chapter aptly called Dramatis Personae." Then the stage is set and we have once again his sure and certain hope that the Law of Entropy will stand and the Universe, like a crumbling scroll, pass away.
Here he can now strengthen that already robust faith by showing how the Expanding Universe makes it still more improbable that that Universe will ever repeat. A Universe which really develops, and not merely see-saws, leads not unnaturally into a world of freedom, and Chapter 4 shows the Unrepentant Indeterminist bitting back with no impre- cision at those who say that somehow Determinism will return, and those other scientists who, though more cautious in their faith, still wish to warn off philosophy from this strange hole that has been pierced in the elder system and will have it that this discovery has nothing to do with the practical man. Here Sir Arthur's brilliant pamphleteering style has never been shown to greater effect. This chapter, .called justly " The Decline of Determinism," is followed by a couple on ". Indeterminacy" and " Probability."
Our minds now cleared as to how we see and what is the limit of our. seeing, we turn again to the outer universe—"The Constitution of the Stars," "Subatomic Energy," "Cosmic Clouds," "The Expanding Universe " being the subjects of suc- cessive chapters, and showing how our knowledge seems to " flash-over " between the two poles of the Macroscopic and the Microscopic limits. We return to method rather tLaa observation in " Constants in Natiire " and " The Theory of Groups." These chapters, do what Sir Arthur will- to help us with simile and parable, are stiff going. But at the end the lay reader can feel that he takes away a consistent picture both of the universe around him and of the position of himself the observer. And it is not merely an abstract interest that has been satisfied. The concluding chapter makes that clear. In " Criticisms and Controversies" the author Again faces up to his full responsibility. He has said that modern physics matters to the ordinary man. He sticks to his guns. He has made his case and, far from shirking the conclusion, he pushes it home. This book, then, is one to keep not merely for its intrinsic interest, which is great, but because it will undoubtedly be the centre of wide- spread controversy. Not merely the physicist and the amateur scientist will need it by them, but all who are interested in the turn which Science has taken toward recovering its position as Natural Philosophy, all sociologists and ethicists will need to know this book well. It is full of such revolutionary possibilities that it may -perhaps come to be compared with the Essay Concerning Human Under- standing.
GERALD HEARD.
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