The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1891-05-07
SCIENTIFIC FAITH.

! Students of science seem to have un-
bounded faith. They soon come to believe
that atoms exist, and are shocked to hear
any one question the atomic theory. DE-
MoCRITus, in the fifth century before
CHRIST, made as shrewd guess at the ex-
istence of these simple, impenetrable units,
reciprocally bounded off and separated, as
has ever been made since, right down to
our own era Of scientific achievement and
| speculation. He supposed that the atoms,
variously heavy, float in empty space and
impinge on each other, and imagined their
various groupings to account for the forma-
ton and destruction of all worldly things.
He thought there was a predestination or
necessity 10 the movements of the atoms,
and he named this chance. Having made
this guess as to the ultimate constitution of
things, the atoms, and this labelling of
their harmonious co-working by the name
of chance, the system of DEMoCRITUs was
quite prepared to lapse into atheism, and
did so.
| The modern scientific guesser is as bold
as DEMoCRITUs, and leads his students to
believe that the atoms are real things,
|
or demonstrated their existence. The
student of science rarely looks upon his
atom as the unknown quantity, the of
algebra, though in reality it is nothing
more. Its existence is matter of infer
ence merely, and is not fact of knowl-
edge. By assuming its existence we are
enabled to obtain an explanation of GER
tain facts, just as by assuming the exist
eEce of the glacial epoch we explain
others. To the student these atoms seem
| as real as the mass or the molecule. And
having so far enlarged his faith in the IN
seen and the improved as to accept with
! out reservation the existence of the atoms,
| the student sometimes takes another and
greater step then, and believes not only
that the atoms exist, but that nothing else
exists besides them. Then the student
says the atoms exist simply because they
exist and that is the end of it, while they
build up by their necessary mechanical
and chemical properties the things of this
world.
1t requires so much more faith to believe
this supposition than it does to believe any
of the miracles of sacred history, that
we can hardly see why it is so readily be-
lieved in.
If there are atoms land we know no rea-
son why there shouldn't De) and they pos
| sess these remarkable powers of combina-
ton, attraction and repulsion that enable
them to build up the various substances of
earth, they certainly bear the marks of
manufactured articles, for they seem to
have been made on a fixed plan and with
evident design in their construction. They
form substances that look like manufac-
tured products, like machines. The effects
OF their combinations seem purpose like
and 1t would require strong evidence to
remove that impression. An Ineligible
order is realized by them, and this suggests
guiding intelligence determining their
laws and relations with reference to the
end they realize. And when the student
of science is content to say things exist as
they DO, and no more need be said of them
that 1t is not necessary to seek cause pro-
portional to the effect produced-a cause of
the human mind and soul, for eXample-he
really shows how much greater is his
faith in confessed theory than is the
faith of the most devout believer in what
is claimed to be a fact.