Science: At Glasgow

The 96th annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, at Glasgow last week, was a grand concourse of ideas on chemistry, physics, psychology, mathematics, geology. So specialized and abstruse were most of the papers read in 13 sectional meetings that the 3,000 scientists attending (from all the continents) were eager to get the Glasgow newspapers for popularized reports of what was happening in fields other than their own. However there was a strong thread of thought running through all the discussions: the application of science in industry.

“Craftsmanship Science.” New president of the B. A. A. S. (to succeed Sir Arthur Keith) is Sir William Henry Bragg, director of the Davy-Faraday Research Laboratory at the University of London. His greatest contribution to science is his use of x-rays to describe and measure the atoms and molecules of crystals. As is expected of new B. A. A. S. presidents, Sir William stated his scientific credo: “There are some who think that science is inhuman. They speak as though students of modern science would destroy reverence and faith. I do not know how that can be said of the student who stands daily in the presence of what seems to him to be the Infinite. Science is not setting forth to destroy the soul, but to keep body and soul together.” In this he took a view opposite to that of retiring President Sir Arthur Keith, who at Leeds last year emphasized the finity of human effort (TIME, Sept. 12, 1927).

But that credo was almost an aside in President Bragg’s address. He dwelt much more on craftsmanship and science. British scientists are less aware of industry’s needs than are their U. S. colleagues. The academic and the workaday are more separate there than here. Hence Sir William was obliged to exhort: “The plain truth is that modern craftsmanship, with all its noise and ugliness, is giving food, clothing, warmth and interest to millions who otherwise must die. In all honesty let us recognize that we live on craftsmanship in its modern form.” The motor, aviation; chemical, electrical industries all need and use scientific research. But British factories are sluggards in their support of science; not so U. S. factories.

President Bragg’s scientific audience (3,000 people) thus stirred to think of science’s relation to industry, spent the week-end of their convention inspecting shipyards and factories around Glasgow.

Educated Industrialists. As everyone from the U. S. knew, it was flattery for Charles Wilfrid Valentine, professor of education at the University of Birmingham, to say that the best brains of the U. S. are attracted to business and the second and third best to the professions. But he, bitter against the educational recalcitrancy of England, wanted to make a point against the “hard-dying social stigma which attaches to being in trade” in England. He wants English young men to study for business. Present British industrialists he holds in contempt. Many lack wits enough to be army corporals, he exaggerated, exasperated.

Hand Talk. Sir Richard Arthur Surtees Paget, lawyer, physicist, songwriter, stood before one section of the B. A. A. S. with some tin tubes. By solemnly blowing and wiggling his fingers he made the tubes give out familiar words. This was his way of proving that sounds could be resolved into simple elements and contrariwise, combined into complex sounds. He urged further scientific study of phonation so that eventually all people will pronounce their words uniformly.

His theory of speech is that it began with gestures: “Primitive man would sing, grunt or roar to express emotions just as the animals did. He would pantomime with his face and limbs to express his ideas to his fellows, and as he pantomimed with his hands his tongue would follow suit.* But as he came to occupy his hands more and more in his crafts he would have to rely more on gestures of the face, tongue and lips. Then it would come about that pantomime action would be recognized by sound as well as sight. Speech was thus born.”

Variable Sex. Twenty-six women read papers at Glasgow; 14 were botanists. One of the botanists, Professor Dame Helen Charlotte Isabella Gwynne-Vaughan of the University of London, brought her audience to sharp attention by announcing discovery of four different sexes in toadstools. Their differences are so slight that they can be called only plus or minus. Each type can breed with the other three and, under some circumstances, with its own kind. The differences seem to result from the differences in food substances absorbed by the parent fungi. The toadstool sexes are variable. If such is true of fungi, it may also be true of higher life forms.

Zuider Zee. As far as written history records, the Zuider Zee of the Netherlands was until 1395 a fresh-water lake. In that year the ocean broke through the barrier of dunes. Hence Amsterdam is a seaport. Lately, however, the Dutch have started an 8-year project to build 18 miles of main dykes 450 ft. wide, 25 ft. above Amsterdam’s level to lock in the Zuider Zee. By 1952 swamps will be reclaimed, almost 1,000,000 acres of land reclaimed, and the Zuider Zee made again into an inland lake.

State of Manhattan. Alan Grant Ogilvie, Reader in Geography at the University of Edinburgh, only child of Sir Francis Grant Ogilvie (chairman of the British Geological Survey Board), took New York City as the illustration of what can happen to a district happily situated geographically. New York’s tides fluctuate only four to five feet.* That helps shipping. The terrain changes practically not at all. Travel routes naturally converge toward the city. He recommended that the States of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut cede land for the formation of a State of Manhattan. The natural Manhattan area now contains 9,000,000 people, will in 40 years carry twice as many. The Russell Sage Foundation in Manhattan has been making a study towards this same end.

Down House, in Kent, where Charles Darwin wrote his Origin of Species, has been acquired as a public memorial. The Hon. John Collier, who painted portraits of Darwin and his publicist Huxley, has made duplicates of the pictures to be hung in Down House.

School Examinations. That examinations be omitted as vicious at secondary schools, was the plea of Headmaster Cyril Norwood of Harrow.

Faith. Venerable Sir Oliver Joseph Lodge, scientist and spiritualist, preached a Sunday rhapsody. Dressed in his academic robes, a bible in his hands, his white beard faintly moving like a mystic voice, he cried his faith:

“Problems do not get easier as the World grows older. The extraordinary multiplicity of plants and animals is astounding. What an imagination the Creator must have had! Our growth of knowledge of the planetary system shows that everything is governed by one system of law. Order permeates all space which leads us to postulate the existence of some great being who controls all.”

*Charles Darwin noticed that people cutting with a pair of scissors often moved their jaws sympathetically. This seems the rational explanation for typists chewing gum. *London’s tides fluctuate 16 to 20 ft. t Discoverer of the cosmic ray was Dr. Werner Kolhoerster, Germany.