Popular scientific lectures. Ernst Mach
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appear to be flowing slowly downwards.
Now let us turn the disk more rapidly. Then while the second aperture is passing into the place of the first, drop 1 will not quite have reached the place of 2, but will be found slightly above 2, 2 slightly above 3, etc. Through the successive apertures we shall see the drops at successively higher places. It will now look as if the jet were flowing upwards, as if the drops were rising from the lower vessel into the higher.
You see, physics grows gradually more and more terrible. The physicist will soon have it in his power to play the part of the famous lobster chained to the bottom of the Lake of Mohrin, whose direful mission, if ever liberated, the poet Kopisch humorously describes as that of a reversal of all the events of the world; the rafters of houses become trees again, cows calves, honey flowers, chickens eggs, and the poet's own poem flows back into his inkstand.
You will now allow me the privilege of a few general remarks. You have seen that the same principle often lies at the basis of large classes of apparatus designed for different purposes. Frequently it is some very unobtrusive idea which is productive of so much fruit and of such extensive transformations in physical technics. It is not otherwise here than in practical life.
The wheel of a waggon appears to us a very simple and insignificant creation. But its inventor was certainly a man of genius. The round trunk of a tree perhaps first accidentally led to the observation of the ease with which a load can be moved on a roller. Now, the step from a simple supporting roller to a fixed roller, or wheel, appears a very easy one. At least it appears very easy to us who are accustomed from childhood up to the action of the wheel. But if we put ourselves vividly into the position of a man who never saw a wheel, but had to invent one, we shall begin to have some idea of its difficulties. Indeed, it is even doubtful whether a single man could have accomplished this feat, whether perhaps centuries were not necessary to form the first wheel from the primitive roller.[16]
History does not name the progressive minds who constructed the first wheel; their time lies far back of the historic period. No scientific academy crowned their efforts, no society of engineers elected them honorary members. They still live only in the stupendous results which they called forth. Take from us the wheel, and little will remain of the arts and industries of modern life. All disappears. From the spinning-wheel to the spinning-mill, from the turning-lathe to the rolling-mill, from the wheelbarrow to the railway train, all vanishes.
In science the wheel is equally important. Whirling machines, as the simplest means of obtaining quick motions with inconsiderable changes of place, play a part in all branches of physics. You know Wheatstone's rotating mirror, Fizeau's wheel, Plateau's perforated rotating disks, etc. Almost the same principle lies at the basis of all these apparatus. They differ from one another no more than the pen-knife differs, in the purposes it serves, from the knife of the anatomist or the knife of the vine-dresser. Almost the same might be said of the screw.
It will now perhaps be clear to you that new thoughts do not spring up suddenly. Thoughts need their time to ripen, grow, and develop in, like every natural product; for man, with his thoughts, is also a part of nature.
Slowly, gradually, and laboriously one thought is transformed into a different thought, as in all likelihood one animal species is gradually transformed into new species. Many ideas arise simultaneously. They fight the battle for existence not otherwise than do the Ichthyosaurus, the Brahman, and the horse.
A few remain to spread rapidly over all fields of knowledge, to be redeveloped, to be again split up, to begin again the struggle from the start. As many animal species long since conquered, the relicts of ages past, still live in remote regions where their enemies cannot reach them, so also we find conquered ideas still living on in the minds of many men. Whoever will look carefully into his own soul will acknowledge that thoughts battle as obstinately for existence as animals. Who will gainsay that many vanquished modes of thought still haunt obscure crannies of his brain, too faint-hearted to step out into the clear light of reason? What inquirer does not know that the hardest battle, in the transformation of his ideas, is fought with himself.
Similar phenomena meet the natural inquirer in all paths and in the most trifling matters. The true inquirer seeks the truth everywhere, in his country-walks and on the streets of the great city. If he is not too learned, he will observe that certain things, like ladies' hats, are constantly subject to change. I have not pursued special studies on this subject, but as long as I can remember, one form has always gradually changed into another. First, they wore hats with long projecting rims, within which, scarcely accessible with a telescope, lay concealed the face of the beautiful wearer. The rim grew smaller and smaller; the bonnet shrank to the irony of a hat. Now a tremendous superstructure is beginning to grow up in its place, and the gods only know what its limits will be. It is not otherwise with ladies' hats than with butterflies, whose multiplicity of form often simply comes from a slight excrescence on the wing of one species developing in a cognate species to a tremendous fold. Nature, too, has its fashions, but they last thousands of years. I could elucidate this idea by many additional examples; for instance, by the history of the evolution of the coat, if I were not fearful that my gossip might prove irksome to you.
We have now wandered through an odd corner of the history of science. What have we learned? The solution of a small, I might almost say insignificant, problem—the measurement of the velocity of light. And more than two centuries have worked at its solution! Three of the most eminent natural philosophers, Galileo, an Italian, Römer, a Dane, and Fizeau, a Frenchman, have fairly shared its labors. And so it is with countless other questions. When we contemplate thus the many blossoms of thought that must wither and fall before one shall bloom, then shall we first truly appreciate Christ's weighty but little consolatory words: "Many be called but few are chosen."
Such is the testimony of every page of history. But is history right? Are really only those chosen whom she names? Have those lived and battled in vain, who have won no prize?
I doubt it. And so will every one who has felt the pangs of sleepless nights spent in thought, at first fruitless, but in the end successful. No thought in such struggles was thought in vain; each one, even the most insignificant, nay, even the erroneous thought, that which apparently was the least productive, served to prepare the way for those that afterwards bore fruit. And as in the thought of the individual naught is in vain, so, also, it is in that of humanity.
Galileo wished to measure the velocity of light. He had to close his eyes before his wish was realised. But he at least found the lantern by which his successor could accomplish the task.
And so I may maintain that we all, so far as inclination goes, are working at the civilisation of the future. If only we all strive for the right, then are we all called and all chosen!
WHY HAS MAN TWO EYES?
Why has man two eyes? That the pretty symmetry of his face may not be disturbed, the artist answers. That his second eye may furnish a substitute for his first if that be lost, says the far-sighted economist. That we may weep with two eyes at the sins of the world, replies the religious enthusiast.
Odd opinions! Yet if you should approach a modern scientist with this question you might consider yourself fortunate if you escaped with less than a rebuff. "Pardon me, madam, or my dear sir," he would say, with stern expression, "man fulfils no purpose in the possession of his eyes; nature is not a person, and consequently not so vulgar as to pursue purposes of any kind."
Still an unsatisfactory answer! I once knew a professor who would shut with horror the mouths of his pupils if they put to him such an unscientific question.
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