Evening Star Newspaper, April 23, 1933, Page 68

e = - in all. It is a universe of enormously heightened interest and imjortance. “Even if man has only a sthall part in the cosmic drama, it is a part in a mag- nificent and harmonious whole, and man is dignified by his participation in it. We are citizens of no mean city. Our spirits are fortified by this ordered vision of the world—the assurance that law reigns is an indispensable spiritual resource in times like these. There is no contribu- tion of modern knowledge that exceeds in significance the opportunity for spiritual growth made possible by science in freeing us from superstition. We see a world more wonderful and more beau- tiful than it could be without this inti- macy of understanding.” THIS vision of order which astronomy supremely reveals runs through all nature as science sees it in the rocks of the earth and in the atoms of the rocks, in the living cells of the thinking brain and in the infinitesimal genes within the cells—and man, the one creature con- scious of this intricate complexity and its inner unity, becomes more—rather than less—significant as the vastness unfolds its deeper mystery. “Man no longer lives in an isolated present,” Dr. Merriam went on to say. “We recognize the past as not just a static ruin. And we see the future not as a mere vista between castles in the air, but as representing something that is coming to be—something that may be changed, bettered or marred by that which passes through past and present to fytuge. The stream of this movement is in part through us, therefore partly under our influence, and man becomes a molder of the future.” Thus there is a promise that man can better his world—and this promise ap- plies not only to the material things of our industrial civilization, but to the even more important intangible things of a life and a society of lives. I have previously quoted the estimate of J. B. S. Haldane that “there is perhaps no limit at all to man’s intellectual and spiritual progress” through the applica- tion of science; i. e., in the rather im- probable event of man taking his own evolution in hand. Dr. Merriam believes that such im- provement in both the intellectual and the spiritual stock of the race will come through the broadening influence of science. As yet gve have worked mainly with physical nature—the triumphs of re- search have been greatest in such inani- mate realms as physics and chemistry, “and the problems of the physicist and the chemist are child’s play,” added the president of the Carnegie Institution, THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, APRIL ——————————r———————— 23, 1933, “compared with those of the biologist; and the biologist’s tasks in turn are easy compared with those of the man who would build a science of society. Hard as they are even to visualize, these at~ tainments- must come—and the only way they can come is by the scientific method.” Walter Lippmann recently pointed out that the political significance of the present lies in the fact that for the first time in history “the ideal that a social order can and should be planned and managed has taken root among the peo- ple themselves.” R. MERRIAM sees science-as a neces- sary instrumentality both in the planning and in the administering of society in the future—even as it has been one of the greatest forces bringing the peoples of the earth to this end of laissez faire. He sees as ‘“close at hand the end of the age-long struggle with the wilderness of nature through which man has come up from savagery,” and he sees as an inescapable corollary that “life in those jungles which arise by human construction requires not less science, but more of the kind of method and type of ability that have marked human progress- to the present stage.” Human progress to the present stage has been attained through increasing use of what Dr. Merriam calls “the parallax method.” “The early astronomers,” he explained, “wishing to determine the distances of heavenly bodies, hit on the idea of sighting the moon from two widely separated points on the earth. By measuring the angle of its displacement, or ‘parallax,’ as it is called, they were able to construct a triangle from which te compute the lunar distance. The method worked with the planets and the sun, but when it was tried on the stars the observers were unable to get any parallax. “Finally, it occurred to one pioneering mind that if he took an observation of a star, and then waited six months, until the earth was on the other side of the sun, and sighted the star again, he’d save a baseline of 180,000,000 miles in- stead of the earth’s 8,000 miles. He tried it, and got a displacement, small but measurable. “The attainment of this first stellar parallax was a great stroke of the human mind. That leap of discovery not only showed how remote the stars are, but it demonstrated a new method of sounding distances—it opened a new universe of thought.” “The parallax method of research— sighting a mystery from opposite sides of the orbit—has been prolific of discov- “LET’S START A LITTLE OR some time I have felt this craving stirring within me and now I propose to give way to it in a large public way.. I want to start a crusade—organize a cause, if you will—on behalf of certain of our dumb beast friends, creatures which daily are the victims either of an un- thinking and parroted calumny or, what is al- most as bad, have in the popular imagination been fabulously endowed with virtues they never d and never will possess. We have a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals—and a remarkably good thing it is, and” deserving of general support. Mine is going to be a Society for the Prevention of Slander to Animals, also Fowls and Insects. A few illustrations chosen at random from a vast collection of such fallacies and falsehoods herewith is offered in support of my thesis, and my plan unch a movement, as we say in the best women’s club circles. We are forever asserting that somebody is as sllly as a goose. That is a more tham stupid simile, a more than unfair one. In the first place, it's cruel, and in the second place it is untruth. If the person who says such a libelous thing means a wild goose, then he never tried to hunt any wild geese. If he had he would know that to stalk a wild goose afoot is one of the most difficult jobs a hunter ever tackled and that to deceive a wild goose by camouflage or artificial devices is almost as hard, because never yet was there hatched a feeble-minded wild gosling, nor ever did there grow up a wild goose that wasn't smart and wary, and that didn’t have eyes all over its body, so to speak. The unwitting scandalmonger can’t be mean- ing the domestic goose, either. For of all the barnyard menagerie the tame goose is the shrewdest and the calmest and the most capable. - It is the young turkey which goes peddling about in the fatal dew or the flooded wood lot in order that it may get its feet wet and die unpleasantly. In times of drought a young turkey has been known to jump down an artesian well 200 feet deep just to get its feet wet. And it is the chicken scratching in the road which loses its presence of mind at the- approach of an automobile and goes into a frenzy of senseless fear and tries to oft inrtwo or three directions at once and so flut- ters into doom instead of flitting away from it. But who ever ran over a goose? Mortality statistics compiled by the United States Government conclusively prove that in proportion to relative numbers, for every goose destroyed in traffic, two Harvard professors are killed outright and one is badly injured. The moral is plain: We shouldn't say a person is as silly as a goose; we should say as silly as a member of a college faculty. Because of a perfectly legendary superstition handed down from pagan days we ascribe vast wisdom to the owl. Now, man and boy, I've been giving scientific attention to a study of this subject in all its branches for going on upward of 40 years, and I now rise, as an old owlologist, to state that here is a tradition which should have been outlawed four or five thousand years ago. An owl has a terribly close call from being a plain half-wit. Nature taught the owl—or tried to—that his eyes were adapted only for night- time use. So, for no reason at all, he goes gawking around in broad dalylight, bumping into things and goggling about, and pretty soon the crows and hawks and the jays, all sworn enemies of his, come in swarms and peck out his plumage until the poor purblind, helpless thing looks like the wreckage of a vintage feather gduster. Still, there is a reason, although not a very good one, for this misconception touching on the owl's supposedly higher mentality. Any politician or any public man who keeps still in public, as the owl does, and just looks in- scrutable and important, as the owl will, eventually gets the reputation of being sapient. We say to ourselves, “If eyer that thoughtful party does open up we’ll certainly hear some- thing worth while,” when probably the facts are that this individual never had anything to say and hasn’t anything to say now and never will have anything to say, but has got the gumption not to try. We speak of a rational and balanced man as having horse sense, but by a reverse shifting of the gears we make the jackass a synonym for blatant ignorsnce and bald unreasonableness. By rights, we should turn the thing exactly around. erles, but it has done more—it has broad- ened the mind as it has widened the View of the investigator, and has given a tol- erance and an understanding and a bal- ance which no degree of intensive spe- cialization alone could give. = “It’s my idea that here is a principle that will work in other fields also—in economics as well as in the physical sciences, in government as well as in astronomy, though admittedly the diffi- culties are enormously "greater on these social science frontiers. “When the Carnegie Institution was planning a means of publishing and in- terpreting our scientific problems and results for the lay public, I said to our board of trustees: ‘If the average citi- zen could be brought to understand the meaning of our new knowledge and to recognize the gaps that yet remain, he would realize how important it is to obtain the whole truth, and he would be more open-minded to other problems also. Thus in study of the spiral nebulae we may develop an attitude of mind which will be important in study of problems of politics and religion—we may learn the need for more informa- tion instead of snap judgment in every- thing, and appreciation of the truth that knowledge is attained by the patient and dispassionate collection of new facts. This is the greatest gift that science can bring—the gift of seeing a problem from the other side of the orbit.” One gets from Dr. Merriam no proud claims for the material gifts of research and invention. He is willing to grant that after all the miracles of synthetic chemistry are admitted, after all the added miles-an-hour and bushels-an- acre and units-a-man-an-hour are counted, even after all the gifts of medi- cine and surgery are recorded, there may still remain a question concerning what he calls “the joy of living and the ulti- mate contribution of a life.” Wl'rH the tremendous developments of telephone and radio, can we say that the material transmitted is any better than our communications before these facilities were available?” he asked. “Do automobile, airplane and other rapid transports make more important the aggregate of things we rush to do? “Have the ‘movies’ and other easy means of amusement developed only to become substitytes for thought? “Does a materialistic view” of science crowd the reverential aspect of spiritual living into a position of relative unim- portance? “In other words, has the development of science depressed the level of moral and spiritual life to a plane below that MOVEMENT,” Granted that, mechanically and auto- matically—and that’s only because his memory is excellent—a horse exhibits certain laboriously- acquired traits which make him useful to man, the fact remains that, with or without provoca- tion, he flies all to pieces at the most un- fortunate moment. A well trained horse will pass some harmless wayside object a thousand times without taking any notice of it what- soever; and then, the thousandth and first time, he gets a sudden attack of pollen in the pod and shies from that article as though it were a churn full of rattlesnakes and runs way and keeps on running away until he smashes up something or somebody and breaks his legs and dashes out his own poor clabbered brains. But did any one ever authentically report an instance wherein a jackass lost its poise or surrendered its pose of studied indifference to mundane trivialities or failed to lock after its own safety in hours of crisis or emergency? And while a mule—which is but a half-breed jackass born out of wedlock—may succumb to the horse strain in it and on occasion run away, the potent jackass blend so guides its actions that never by any chance does the said mule suffer any personal hurt as the outcome of its temporary hallucinations. It may knock down some unwary pedestrian, it may demolish the wagon to which it is hitched, but it never damages itse®. It knows too much for that. That seeming panic is merely for a passing effect, whereas its aunt on its mother’s side, old Maggie May, the family nag, the mare that walks like a sheep, picks out a peaceful Sunday afternoon as a suitable time to go insane and spreads devastation right on up to the suicidal climax when she knocks her maniacal head off right against the side of a brick smokehouse. If the barn catches afire the mule comes right on out of there. If neces:ary, he’ll kick his way out through the side of the stable. But the horse goes mad and won’t quit his stall unless you muffle his head, and then, if not securely hitched, he’ll dash right back into the flames and, for no imaginable reason whatsover, remain until well done. Put too heavy a load on a horse or behind him, and he carries it, or tries to, until he drops. A mule will make cne effort to start the wheels of the overburdened represented by the straight and resolute thinking of our ancestors? “It need not be so. Science is simply the truth about things, and the things that may come within its scope are as wide as human affairs. The Carnegie Institution is dedicated by its charter to ‘investigation, research and discovery and the application of knowledge to the improvement of mankind,’ and that I believe comprehends the true objective and the highest Mieal of pure science. “The ‘improvement of mankind’ in- cludes the teaching of straight thinking —the development of a scientific atti- tude of mind among the people gener- ally toward the outside world and toward .one another. The kind of government . that we are trying out in the world to- day depends for its success on the intelli- gence and altruism of the citizens. The intelligence and altruism of the citizens depend on the breadth and depth and reality of their knowledge. “This puts a great responsibility on research to ascertain and organize knowledge, and on education to see that it reaches the people. Thus it becomes part of the function of science to give us such a well rounded understanding of the universe, including man, as will permit us to enjoy in a constructive sense all the resources that surround us—ma- terial, intellectual, emotional, spiritual— to experience ‘the joy of living’ and to make the ultimate contribution of ‘a life.’” ALT WHITMAN sensed it when he wrote: The earth is rude, silent and incompre. hensible at first; Be not discouraged—keep on—there are divine things well enveloped, I swear there are divine things—more beautiful than tongue can tell. And so, to those who fear the unblazed trails of the laboratory, who shrink from its stark revelations, which the micro- scope and the telescope and the spectro- scope daily contribute, who are terrified by the vastness and oppressed by the long silences and tortured by the thought of man’s littleness in nature’s ovérwhelming immensity, one recalls this reassurance of the seer: “Be not dis- couraged—keep on—there are divine things well enveloped, more beautiful than tongue can tell.” “If I had my course to choose over again,” said Dr. Merriam, “I would still take the rocks for my study—the great- est historical document cf all the ages” —rude, silent and incomprehensible at first—*T should still want the long view, to see the world and my life and its prob- lems from the other side of the orbit.” Says Irvin S. Cobb turning, and then, finding the task be- , he has the shrewdness to balk in and stay balked until the tonnage has been reduced. Given unlimited food, & horse will founder himself; but a mule quits when be has had just enough. It is a compli- ment that is meant, and not a criticism, when our Negro folks down South very wisely remark of some other person, “Dat one's got a haid on him ez long ez a mule.” Take the ant, which for centuries, since Biblical times, we've been telling the sluggard he ought to go to. Not that there’s any record that the sluggard ever went, but nobody could say we didn’t keep on telling him. The Scrip- tures first gave the ant an undeserved boost. And Aesop, who was pretty cagey in his zoology and should have known better, also came along with a fable in which he handed the ant all the best of it as compared with the carefree grasshopper. So the ant became the symbol for industry and application and has remained enshrined in that niche ever since, occupying a place in public estimation right next to the busy bee. Not even so great a man as Mark Twain was, with all his wealth of satire and irony, could upset the ancient fetish. He tried to show— in fact, did show—that much of the ant’s en- ergy was wasted, misplaced energy; that the ant would work itself into a lather trying to salvage some piece of junk for which it could have no earthly use, just as some other ob- servant philosopher had proven that the mis- guided, blundering bee devotes its existence and finally breaks down its nervous system, hiving up more honey than it and the rest of its swarm can ever possibly need. S I think I know why, locally at least, Mark Twain’s justified attack against that sweaty- browed, horny-handed son of toil, the ant, didn’'t get anywhere, It was contrary to all our traditions. The ant appealed to & nation dedicated to business because, well wasn’t he the typical business man of the insect world? Look at him: Never taking a day off, always Continued on Fifteenth Page.