achievements is nevertheless materialistic, and that it cannot by
itself, no matter how well organized, advance the spiritual welfare of
a nation. Some even go so far as to maintain that national endeavors in
the direction of very extensive scientific research and very elaborate
scientific training are apt to interfere seriously with the spiritual
development of our national life. This is particularly true of people
who are stirred up, from time to time, by imaginary conflicts between
science and religion. I may be permitted here to state briefly how
science, as I see it cultivated by the men who are associated in the
National Research Council, will contribute to the spiritual welfare of
our nation by describing briefly some of its ideals.
Fifty years ago Tyndall, as I have already mentioned, came to America
and helped to start the great scientific movement which has culminated
in the organization of the National Research Council. At that time
Andrew White, the famous president of Cornell, spoke the following
historic words in behalf of this historic movement, which I have been
watching since its very beginning, and actively aiding whenever an
opportunity presented itself:
Now, sir, I maintain that the true spirit of the scientific
research, embracing as it does zeal in search for truth, devotion
to duty, which such a search imposes, faith in good, as the normal
and necessary result of such a search ... that such a spirit is,
at this moment, one of the most needed elements in the political
progress of our country.
What I maintain, then, is, that this zeal for truth as truth, this
faith in the good forever allied to the truth, this devotion to
duty, as the result of such faith and zeal, constitute probably the
most needed element at this moment in the political regeneration of
this country, and that, therefore, the example of our little army
of true devotees of science has an exceeding preciousness.
Their zeal, their devotion, their faith, furnish one of those very
protests which are most needed against that low tone of political
ideas which in its lower strata is political corruption. Their life
gives that very example of a high spirit, aim, and work, which the
time so greatly needs.
The aims and aspirations and the life of American scientists have not
changed since Andrew White spoke these memorable words fifty years ago.
A life guided by aims and aspirations such as he describes is a life
of saints and not of ordinary materialistic clay. Such a life cannot
be attained without unceasing nursing of the spirit and unrelenting
suppression of the flesh. Men of Andrew White’s clearness of vision
will certainly tell you not only that the disciplined army of American
scientists mobilized under the flag of the National Research Council
will not interfere with the spiritual development of our national life,
but that, on the contrary, nothing else will advance that spiritual
development so rapidly and so irresistibly. The intellectual and
spiritual discipline which, according to White, our nation needs, is
certainly one of the ideals of these men of science.
I shall mention now two other ideals. Just watch on some summer morning
how the early rays of the sun arouse the slumbering rose from its
blissful dreams, and remember that the rose responds because its body
and soul are tuned to the melodies which the glorious sunlight is
pouring into its enchanted ear. Remember also that what I have just
described is not merely a flowery figure of speech, but that it is a
concise description of a beautiful physical relationship, which science
has discovered in the life of the rose. I proceed a step further,
and ask: Have you ever feasted your joyful eye upon the beauties of
the landscape when on a golden May day you behold the blossoming
fruit-trees cover as far as your vision can reach the velvety green
turf of the numerous orchards of some blessed countryside? What does
each of these fruit-trees with its countless blossoms suggest to your
imagination? “The honey-hearted fruit of the mellow summer season,”
many of you will say. Yes, the blossom and the fruit are so far as the
untutored mind can see the beginning and the end of the short chain
of apparently commonplace events which make up the annually returning
life activity of the humble fruit-tree. Who cares what happens between
so beautiful a beginning and so satisfactory an end? The scientist
cares; his trained eye detects here an enchanting tale. Every one of
those fruit-trees on the golden May day appears to him like a bride
arrayed in the gayest of wedding raiment, waiting for the approaching
bridegroom. Its countless blossoms invite with longing lips the
life-giving kiss of the heavenly groom, the glorious sun. The balmy
breath of this golden bridegroom fills the air, kissing the lips of
every flower in the gay and festive orchards, and in the juicy pastures
and meadows. A heavenly thrill fills the hearts of these enamoured
blossoms, when, with sighs of delicious perfume, they, like blushing
brides, respond to the tender caresses of the heavenly bridegroom! Yes,
there will be honey-hearted fruit in the mellow summer season; the busy
bee knows it when it sucks its honey from the joyful bosoms of the
blessed brides; it knows that this honey is the first message to you
that the marriage between the heavenly bridegroom, the golden sun, and
the terrestrial brides, the countless blossoms, will be blessed with
many a heavenly offspring, the honey-hearted fruit of the mellow summer
season.
This is, I admit, somewhat unusual language for a scientist to use. It
is, according to the opinion of many, unsuited to the description of
what people call the cold facts of science. They call them so, but is
their language justified? The physical facts of science are not cold,
unless your soul and your heart are cold. There is white heat somewhere
in every physical fact when we decipher correctly the message which
it conveys to us. A physical fact denotes activity, otherwise it could
not penetrate the depths of our consciousness. Activity is life, in
the broadest sense of this word. Death is cold, but life is hot, and
it is gross abuse of language to speak of cold facts of science. It is
such language that creates prejudice against science, representing its
methods as well as its results as devoid of everything which fires the
emotional side of man. Every physical fact has two terminals; one is in
our consciousness, and the other is in some star which is rejoicing in
the blazing vigor of its youth. Just as the life activity of the early
blossoms, and of the honey-hearted fruit of the mellow summer season,
has its origin in the life-giving breath of the heavenly bridegroom,
the glorious sun, so every terrestrial activity, every physical fact,
with one of its terminals anchored in our consciousness, can trace its
origin to the life-giving breath of some heavenly bridegroom, some
burning star. Just explore the path which leads from one of these
terminals to the other, and you will discover on each side of that path
those beauties which continually thrill the heart of a scientific man.
Do that and you will never again speak of the cold facts of science.
Let me for illustration pursue one of these paths for a little
distance. Fifty years ago, when as a member of a herdsman’s squad of
boys I watched the stars on the black background of a summer midnight
sky, I felt that their fight was a language proclaiming the glory of
God.
Has science changed that vision of the early childhood days? What does
that light convey to my mind to-day? The answer to this question was
born during my lifetime, and the gradual unfolding of its profound
meaning gave me the sweetest thrills of my life. Faraday and Maxwell
told me that light is a manifestation of the activity of electrical
force. The discovery of the Roentgen rays and of radioactivity taught
me that the primordial sources of electrical force are the positive and
the negative electrons, the electrons and the protons, the building
stones of matter, and that light is radiation, that is, propagation
into space of the electrical energy from the atomic structures in
which the electrons with their motions determine the character of the
structure and its energy content. Then came Thomson, the same Thomson
who scared me away from Cambridge, because I thought that he was too
young to be my teacher of physics, and he suggested that the electrons
possess an inertial mass on account of the electrical energy which
is stored up in them. This suggestion led to the generalization that
all electrical energy has mass possessing not only inertia but also
gravitational action. Who does not know to-day of this generalization,
and who has not heard of Einstein and of his verified prophecy that a
beam of light will be deflected by gravitational force? A beam of light
represents electrical energy and electrical energy is gravitationally
active just like any other mass considered by Newton. A star radiating
light radiates electrical energy, and, therefore, it throws out to us
a part of its own mass. When this radiation reaches us we can say,
therefore, without indulging in figures of speech that the star is
visiting us. I am not indulging in a flowery figure of speech when I
call solar radiation the balmy breath of the heavenly bridegroom, the
glorious sun.
Fifty years ago, instructed by David’s psalms, I found in the light of
the stars a heavenly language which proclaims the glory of God, but I
did not know how that language reached me, and I hoped that some day
I might find out. That hope was in my soul when I landed at Castle
Garden. To-day science tells me that the stars themselves bring it to
me. Each burning star is a focus of energy, of life-giving activity,
which it pours out lavishly into every direction of the energy-hungry
space; it pours out the life of its own heart, in order to beget new
life. Oh, what a beautiful vista that opens to our imagination, and
what new beauties are disclosed by science in the meaning of the words
in Genesis: “He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and
man became a living soul.” The light of the stars is a part of the
life-giving breath of God. I never look now upon the starlit vault
of the heaven without feeling this divine breath and its quickening
action upon my soul. But here I must stop. I feel the heavy hand of the
fundamentalist pulling me down, and the icy chill of his disapproving
voice reminds me that his theology will not permit an interpretation
of the words of Genesis which cannot be understood by people whose
knowledge of science is about the same as that of the Assyrians and
Chaldeans of several thousand years ago.
I have taken some pains here to point to some beauties in one
particular department of physical science. Such beauties abound in
every other department of science, and they are in no respect inferior
to those which form the subject of the fine arts, like music, painting,
sculpture, and poetry. To cultivate the beautiful in science, is,
according to my view, the second ideal of the many loyal workers
associated in the National Research Council. Will that kind of science
interfere with the spiritual development of our national life?
The third ideal may be described as follows: All changeable things
are subject to the play of evolution, and are mortal, from the tiny
flower in the field to the awe-inspiring cloud figure in the heavens
which is called the nebula of Orion. But the laws which the stars and
the planets obey in their paths through the heavens never change nor
grow old; they are immutable, they are immortal. The elements of the
microcosm, the electrons in the atom, are as far as we know immutable
and immortal, because man knows no natural process by which the
electrons and the laws which they obey can ever be changed. They are
not the product of any natural process of evolution known to man. To
discover the immutable laws which this substantia, this immutable
foundation of the universe, obeys is the highest aim of scientific
research. The existence of these eternally unchangeable things
brings us face to face with a power which is the eternally immovable
background of all physical phenomena. We feel intuitively that science
will never penetrate the mysteries beyond it, but our faith encourages
us in the belief that there behind the impenetrable veil of this
eternal background is the throne of a divine power, the soul of the
physical world, the activity of which we contemplate in our research of
physical phenomena. I am sure that many loyal members of the National
Research Council believe that scientific research will bring us closer
to this divinity than any theology invented by man ever did. The
cultivation of this belief is certainly one of the ideals of American
science, represented by the men who are associated in the National
Research Council. In the face of this ideal, there certainly cannot be
any conflict between science and religion.
I firmly believe that in the National Research Council we have an
organization which represents the mobilized scientific intellect of
the United States, which in the pursuit of its lofty ideals will some
day succeed in creating in our democracy a profound respect for the
services of the highly trained intellect. A democracy which believes
that its destiny should be intrusted to the leadership of men of
training, discipline, and lofty aspirations and knows how to secure
the services of such men is a democracy which is safe for the world.
Such a democracy, I believe, was the vision of the scientific men
who, fifty years ago, started the great movement for higher endeavor.
Such a democracy will lead some day to what I call ideal democracy,
that is, a state organism in which each human unit contributes its
definite share to the physical and mental activity of the organism. The
relation of the individual to the social body in an ideal democracy,
as I conceive it, will be very similar to the relation of our cells
to our body. Activities of individuals will be coordinated, just as
the activities of our cells are, so that one composite mind will guide
the resultant activities of the whole social body. This is the mind
which my friend, General J. J. Carty, the distinguished engineer and
philosopher, calls the “supermind.” A well selected name, because it
suggests the name “superman” for ideal democracy, and thus attaches to
this somewhat vague concept of recent years a definite meaning. The
general is a strong believer in the theory that by evolutionary steps
we are gradually approaching the state of ideal democracy. He has lived
some forty years in the most perfect industrial organization of the
world, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, and, naturally, he
cannot help being an ardent follower and enthusiastic advocate of the
belief in the advent of ideal democracy. But is there anything in the
history of the evolutionary progress of the world which justifies this
comforting belief? I think there is.
The Greeks of old believed that the world started with chaos, and
that out of the chaos came the cosmos. They were optimists, because
in their theory coordination, order, and beauty were evolved out of
hideous disorder. There are many pessimists to-day who prophesy the
opposite course of development of this, in their opinion, most wicked
world. Modern science confirms the ancient belief of the Greeks in a
remarkable manner. Nothing else so resembles that chaotic start of the
world which the ancients conceived as does the activity of a young
star, because nothing more completely illustrates lack of order and
coordination. Each one of its pulsating atoms is indifferent to the
white-heat activity of the myriads of neighboring atoms, and each one
of them pours out its energy in an unconcerned and most prodigal manner
into the energy-hungry space. Consider our sun, as an illustration.
Tiny energy units are projected from myriads and myriads of its atomic
guns in haphazard fashion, apparently without any definite aim. These
energy units are propagated through space in a perfectly chaotic
fashion, without a definite object in view so far as science can tell.
But their fate and destiny are fixed and determined as soon as they
arrive on mother earth and are caught by the leaves, the blossoms, and
the ripening fruit of the fields, meadows, and orchards, and by the
endless nets of the all embracing oceans. The chaotic, non-coordinated
energy-swarms are thus imprisoned and made to work together with a
definite aim and for a definite purpose. The joys and beauties of our
annual seasons will tell you the story of this wonderful transformation
of primordial energy from the chaos of the young stars, white hot
with joy of life, to the cosmos of the old, cold, and moribund earth.
The principal lesson of this story is the great physical fact that
terrestrial organisms have instrumentalities with which they coordinate
the non-coordinated, thus bringing the order of old age out of the
disorder of youth, final cosmos out of primordial chaos. Is not the
existence of these instrumentalities the fundamental guiding principle
in the development of terrestrial life? Does not all our experience
teach us that progress means more complete coordination of all natural
activities, the activities of the atoms in the burning stars as well as
of the cells in our terrestrial bodies? Call this progress evolution,
or anything else you please, it certainly is there, and it leads to
a more beautiful and a more perfect order of things. The most nearly
perfect product of these coordinating instrumentalities is man--after
man, what? Yes, a superman; but what will that superman be? The present
man, with his physical and mental faculties more highly developed?--or
the superman as represented by what I call ideal democracy? Carty,
guided by his life experience and by the opinion of some biologists
and philosophers, favors the latter view. There certainly is something
in the evolutionary progress of the world which favors the view that
the coordinating instrumentalities which guide the activities of every
organism, and which are very powerful in man, may enable us some day to
find a way of coordinating the non-coordinated activities of the many
millions of individuals of a great community like these United States,
and thus of creating an ideal democracy. I see in the organization of
the National Research Council the first step in that direction.
[Illustration: Facsimile of Letter from President Harding]
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
October 14, 1922.
My dear Doctor Pupin:
I accept with regret your resignation as a member of the National
Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. In doing so I want to express
to you the thanks of the Government and people of the United States
of your services as a member of the National Advisory Committee for
Aeronautics since its organization in 1915.
I take this occasion to record recognition and appreciation
of the fact that, as Chairman of the Subcommittee on Aircraft
Communications, during the World War you undertook to develop a
reliable means of communication between aircraft in flight, and
that, by virtue of experiments conducted and directed in your own
laboratory, you were successful in contributing in an important
respect to the development of one of the great marvels of our age,
the radio telephone.
I regret that you cannot continue to devote your talents to the
scientific study of the problems of flight as a member of the
National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics.
Most sincerely yours,
_Warren G. Harding_
Dr. Michael I. Pupin,
Columbia University,
New York City.
Ideal democracy, if attainable at all, will certainly be attainable in
our country, whose traditions are gradually eliminating racial hatreds
and suspicions and making them unknown human passions on this blessed
continent. If I have ever contributed anything substantial to the
progress of this splendid movement, whether as an immigrant or as an
inventor, it has been most amply rewarded by the generous spirit of the
letter on the opposite page, written by a man whom I had the honor of
knowing personally and who to me always represented the ideal type of a
genuine American.
* * * * *
These few concluding lines I wrote on the day when this good American
breathed his last. His memory will always encourage us in the belief
that our blessed country is destined to become the first ideal
democracy of the world.
INDEX
Action and reaction in electricity, 296-299
Adams, John Crouch, 181
Adams, President, 315
Adelphi Academy, Brooklyn, 108-110, 120
Alexander the Liberator, Czar, 8, 9
Alhazan, 204
Alps, travels in, 146-150, 208
Alternating-current theory, 283-289, 294
American Association for the Advancement of Science, 291, 359
American Institute of Electrical Engineers, 283, 337, 348, 359-362
American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers, 359
_American Journal of Science_, 299
American Mathematical Society, 352
American Philosophical Society, 363
American Physical Society, 351-353, 358, 360
American scientific progress, 279-384 _et passim_
American Society of Civil Engineers, 359
American Society of Mechanical Engineers, 359, 364
American Telephone and Telegraph Company, 335, 338-340, 342, 345, 384
Americanization, 318 _et passim_
Ames, Joseph Sweetman, 256
Ampère, 187, 257
Appel, 257
Arago, 257
Archimedes, 193, 194, 221
Aristides, 92
Aristotle, 20
Armour & Co., 344
Armstrong, Major E. H., 19, 342, 358
Armstrong, Hamilton Fish, 316
Arran (island), 212-217
Aspern (battle), 6
_Astronomy and Astrophysics_, 293
Atomic structure, 356, 357, 384-386. _See also_ Matter, nature of,
_and_ Electrons
Bacon, Roger, 204
Bagpiper, Serbian, 19 _et passim_
Baker’s wagon, painting of, 62, 63
Banat, life and experiences in, 2-22, 95, 96, 152, 157-166, 324, 346
Barnard, President, of Columbia University, 104, 128, 135, 183, 185,
197, 199-202, 205, 220, 230, 278, 290, 291, 320, 375
Barrett, Lawrence, 89
Batikin, Baba, 6-8, 12, 29, 46, 112, 131
Becquerel, 350
Beecher, Doctor Henry Ward, 105-108, 124, 129, 136, 156, 163
Belgrade, experiences in, 153, 162
Belgrade University, 317
Bell, Alexander Graham, 299, 300, 319
Berlin, experiences and study in, 229-278, 309, 318, 338
Berlin, studies at University of, 229-278, 318, 338
Bessemer process, 259
_Bible, The_, 10, 18, 20, 21, 67, 243, 245, 246, 381, 382
Bilharz, 85-95, 100-104, 106, 108, 112, 113, 130, 131, 140, 247, 318
Biscuit factory experiences, 72-76, 78-95
Bismarck, 247, 253, 261, 275
Booth, Edwin, 89, 129
Bowery Mission, 66, 67, 84
Bradley, 285
Brown (New Jersey farmer), 66-68
Browning, Oscar, 143, 171-173
Bryant, William Cullen, 89, 93, 102
Budapest experiences, 25, 30, 150-152, 155, 162
Bukovala’s mill, 168, 169, 243
Bull, Doctor, 307
Burgess, Professor, 128, 135
Butler, Prescott Hall, 307, 308
Butler, President Nicholas Murray, 60
Cambridge University, 143-146, 156, 164, 169-187, 190-211, 309, 318,
321, 338, 349, 381
Campbell, 187, 211, 213, 228
Canal rays, 304
Cane rush, Columbia, 114, 117, 118
Carnegie, Andrew, 259, 360-365, 375
Carnegie Corporation of New York, 371
Carnegie Institution of Washington, 362, 366
Carnot, Sadi, 186, 193
Carter, Mr. (of Norfolk), 328
Carty, General J. J., 384, 387
Castle Garden, 1, 2, 39-41, 43, 45, 98, 99, 104, 105, 142, 148,
278 _et passim_
Cathode rays, 304, 305 _et passim_
Cavendish, Lord, 273
Cavendish Physics Laboratory, 183, 198, 199, 273
Cayley, 192
Centennial Exposition, Philadelphia, 78
Century Club, 308
Chanler, John Armstrong, 135
Charnoyevich, Patriarch, 3, 4
Chicago University, 376
Choate, Joseph, 288
Christian of West Street, 60-64, 72, 73, 80, 92, 104, 247
Christopher (kindling-wood peddler), 111, 117
Chuchuk Stana, 54, 55
Church in Delaware City, 52;
in Brooklyn, 105-107
Cicero, 112
Civil War, United States, 315, 360, 366
Clark, Latimer, 361, 362
Columbia College and University, 98-110, 112-123, 125-130, 132-137,
145, 160, 161, 197-199, 201, 202, 218, 276-310, 320-322, 326, 331,
352, 359, 361, 376 _et passim_
Cooper, Peter, 77, 319
Cooper Union, 64-66, 73, 75-80, 95, 98, 130, 132, 319