Freeland tribune. (Freeland, Pa.) 1888-1921, 1901-06-03
PHENOMENA IN NATURE.
SOME EFFECTS IN MECHANICS DUE
TO CAUSES AS YET UNKNOWN.

are beyond the purview OF engineers is
to limit the scope of the profession.
The business of the engineer is to util-
ize what has been termed, popularity
if not accurately the forces of nature,
for the benefit of mankind. To the
physicist the world is indebted for the
discovery of new phenomena and novel
relations existing between old and new
natural actions and interactlons. 1t
is impossible, however, to draw a mar
row line and say that the province of
the engineer lies on one side and the
territory of the man of pure science
on the other. Thus the discovery OF
the phenomena of electrical induction
was mainly the work of Faraday; but
the construction of dynamos, which
utilize that discovery is the daily work
of the engineer. Reasoning in this
way, it easily becomes obvious that
the engineer is really deeply interested
in the whole course of modern scientific
research; and speculations as to the
constitution of matter and the nature
of energy are by no means to be re-
garded as of necessity distractions,
possessing no real value sufficient to
make them worth studying. No one
can tell from day to day whether or
not some extremely valuable discovery
will be made. There is reason, indeed,
to believe that co-relations of phenon-
ena may at any moment be hit on
which will reduce the telegraph to the
level of a conspicuously clumsy piece
of apparatus, or bring down the cost
of electric lighting to a tenth of it's
existing price. When hertzian waves
We're first spoken OF no one dreamed
that they would enable us to transmit
messages through long distances with
out visible means of communication.
The telephone was built up out of
most unlikely materials; and the man
who asserted that he could make an
iron plate talk to an audience by the
aid of three French nails. a small bat
terry, and a few cylinders, would have
been regarded as a lunatic not SO very
long ago.
OF late those who have watched the
signs of the times will have noticed
that change is coming over the mode
of thought of the more advanced seek
ers after physical truth. Possibly not
many of our readers have carefully fol-
lowed DR.. Larmor's address to Section
A of the British association, which we
have placed on record in our columns.
Possibly fewer of those who have read
it have understood it, DR.. Larmor has
evidently failed to make the English
language express clearly what he
nY,fn nd 70 yN,sir. .,1
1t is a hackneyed saying that words
fail us to express our feelings" But
DR.. Larmor has, in all events, sue
ceeded in telling us that much that
was formerly accepted as the very
groundwork of physical science must
be Abandoned as untenable. He hints,
indeed, that Newton's laws of motion
are no longer satisfactory eXpositions
of well known truths, He seems dis
posed to abandon the idea that force is
the cause of motion; a statement
which we have often pointed out is
wholly inconsistent with Newton's
third law. Ions take the place of
atoms, from which they seem to differ
only in being infinitely more numerous.
Kelvin's theory of vortices, with a diff
ference is favored, and we have again
theory of force centres, which so
closely resembles that advanced years
ago by the late Walter Browne, to say
nothing of Bishop Berkeley, that to the
superficial observer at all events the
distinction is without a difference. But
the most notable feature of the whole
discourse is DR.. Larmor's tendency
to abandon the pursuits of knowledge
in certain direcClons. 1t will be bet
ter, he said in effect, to content our
selves with a statement of the chain of
events SO far as we can see the links,
without attempting to discover the
ends of the chain. We can study the
effects of gravity, but it is forever i'm
possible for the human mind to con-
ceive Of any adequate cause. We may
frame mathematical theories about the
ether, but the human mind is inca
pable of forming a concept of sub
stance which will comply with the con-
ditions. In whatever direction we
turn, we are stopped by the presence
of the unknown. Dr. Larmor will have
it, as we understand him, that much OF
the unknown is unknowable. 1t is pos
sible that we overestimate DR.. Lar
mor's pessimism; we trust that we do.
Among the matters to which he di-
rected attention was attraction. It's
phenomena are common and obvious,
even apart from gravity, but they ap-
pear to be absolutely ineXplicable. We
speak of torque Of motor, or dy
namo, and it is part of the work of the
electrician and the engineer to calcu-
late it's amount under stated condi-
tions; but no one on earth has the
smallest notion of why torgue exists
at all in the combination of iron, cop
per, cotton and shellac. The magnet
gives us a puzzle as recondite as any
in the universe. In old times, when
men did not use very accurate Ian
guage, it was said that lodestone
on a nermanent magnet "attrapted"