The Washington times., 1911-12-27
THE COUNTRY'S LEADING
SCIENTISTS ASSEMBLE.

Three thousand scientists, represent.
ing practically every branch of modern
thought, have assembled in Washing.
ton today to attend the convocation
week of the American Association for
the Advancement of Science.
1t is one of the largest and most
distinguished bodies of men interested
in the search for truth ever gathered
together in one place. The range of
their discussions will extend all the
way from such familiar household
questions as the high cost of living to
the most esoteric secrets of the origin
of life itself.
They have met at time when the
developments of scientific Investigate ton
are moving with rapidity unparalleled
in the worlds history. Old axioms
have been falling like bricks in a row.
New conceptions of the workings of
nature are taking shape and coming
under the critical tests of observation
and experiment. Fallacies as old as
human knowledge have been rectified
and the resultant truths made the
foundation of more stable system.
There is a sense in which it would
be no exaggeration to say that almost
until the close of the last century our
grasp Of the real nature of the universe
might have belonged to the Dark Ages
A familiar illustration may elucidate
the fact. It was believed and taught
for many thousands of years that the
earth was the center of the universe
and that around it revolved the sun
moon, and stars, and all their atten.
-dant train. Exalting the inhabitants
of single planet to a position of su.
preme importance, every concept OF
science and philosophy was predicated
on this theory. There were brilliant
intellects in the Greek and Alexandrian
schools, but they lacked the facts de-
duced from experiment and observation
which would have guided their minds
along the right path.
A single fact changed the face of all
human knowledge. A Prussian geniu.
established for all time the truth that
the earth revolved around the sun, ant
every theory of man, of nature, and oi
the universe had to be recast. Keplel
and Galileo and Newton contributed
their. part toward confirming the new
theory, but in practically every trutl
thus established there was a residua
error, which remained uncorrected ever
to our own day.
Indeed, it is one of the favorit,
axioms of science that results ar,
reached by approximation through
error,"' and that the truths of on,
generation are the errors of the next
Newton was won't to say that a thing
cannot act where it is not, but thi
was contradicted by gravity; nor coult
he uphold the corpuscular theory o
light with all the weight of his colossa
authority. The nebular hypothesis o
Kant and LaPlace has gone the wa.
of all earthly things. And now tn
conception of the atomic construction
of matter, once the very basis o
science, is being assaulted in the hom
of its former friends.
A few years ago there was no othe
source of light save the undulations o
the all-pervading ether, but today tn
Photographic plate reveals the impac
of the wildly rushing electrons.
Even the axioms of geometry ar
disputed, not by plausible notoriety
seekers, but by men like Bolyai, Rel
mann and Labackevski, men who's
work has been pronounced among tn
most brilliant in the history O
human thought"
Finally, the very bulwark and inne
citadel of modern science has bee
carried by assault in the eliminatio
of the old conception of ''the eterna
indestructible and homogeneous atom,
For more than century now tn
law of the conservation of energy an
of the mass has been the very ground
work of all scientific thinking, an
has inspired a superstitious reverence
And yet Becquerel and Nine. Curl
have blue-penciled the conservation q
the mass and have placed large il
terrogation point after the "law" {
the conservation of energy. The W
heaval of old traditions is as gres
as when the center of our univers
was shifted from the earth to the su,