The Foundations of Science: Science and Hypothesis, The Value of Science Science and Method Part 69

What has been said of internal currents shows it is of interest to discuss systematically the aggregate of proper motions; this may be done in a hundred years, when the second edition is issued of the chart of the heavens and compared with the first, that we now are making.

But, in conclusion, I wish to call your attention to a question, that of the age of the milky way or the nebulae. If what we think we see is confirmed, we can get an idea of it. That sort of statistical equilibrium of which gases give us the model is established only in consequence of a great number of impacts. If these impacts are rare, it can come about only after a very long time; if really the milky way (or at least the agglomerations which are contained in it), if the nebulae have attained this equilibrium, this means they are very old, and we shall have an inferior limit of their age. Likewise we should have of it a superior limit; this equilibrium is not final and can not last always.

Our spiral nebulae would be comparable to gases impelled by permanent motions; but gases in motion are viscous and their velocities end by wearing out. What here corresponds to the viscosity (and which depends upon the chances of impact of the molecules) is excessively slight, so that the present regime may persist during an extremely long time, yet not forever, so that our milky ways can not live eternally nor become infinitely old.

And this is not all. Consider our atmosphere: at the surface must reign a temperature infinitely small and the velocity of the molecules there is near zero. But this is a question only of the mean velocity; as a consequence of impacts, one of these molecules may acquire (rarely, it is true) an enormous velocity, and then it will rush out of the atmosphere, and once out, it will never return; therefore our atmosphere drains off thus with extreme slowness. The milky way also from time to time loses a star by the same mechanism, and that likewise limits its duration.

Well, it is certain that if we compute in this manner the age of the milky way, we shall get enormous figures. But here a difficulty presents itself. Certain physicists, relying upon other considerations, reckon that suns can have only an ephemeral existence, about fifty million years; our minimum would be much greater than that. Must we believe that the evolution of the milky way began when the matter was still dark? But how have the stars composing it reached all at the same time adult age, an age so briefly to endure? Or must they reach there all successively, and are those we see only a feeble minority compared with those extinguished or which shall one day light up? But how reconcile that with what we have said above on the absence of a noteworthy proportion of dark matter? Should we abandon one of the two hypotheses, and which?

I confine myself to pointing out the difficulty without pretending to solve it; I shall end therefore with a big interrogation point.

However, it is interesting to set problems, even when their solution seems very far away.

CHAPTER II

FRENCH GEODESY

Every one understands our interest in knowing the form and dimensions of our earth; but some persons will perhaps be surprised at the exact.i.tude sought after. Is this a useless luxury? What good are the efforts so expended by the geodesist?

Should this question be put to a congressman, I suppose he would say: "I am led to believe that geodesy is one of the most useful of the sciences; because it is one of those costing us most dear." I shall try to give you an answer a little more precise.

The great works of art, those of peace as well as those of war, are not to be undertaken without long studies which save much groping, miscalculation and useless expense. These studies can only be based upon a good map. But a map will be only a valueless phantasy if constructed without basing it upon a solid framework. As well make stand a human body minus the skeleton.

Now, this framework is given us by geodesic measurements; so, without geodesy, no good map; without a good map, no great public works.

These reasons will doubtless suffice to justify much expense; but these are arguments for practical men. It is not upon these that it is proper to insist here; there are others higher and, everything considered, more important.

So we shall put the question otherwise; can geodesy aid us the better to know nature? Does it make us understand its unity and harmony? In reality an isolated fact is of slight value, and the conquests of science are precious only if they prepare for new conquests.

If therefore a little hump were discovered on the terrestrial ellipsoid, this discovery would be by itself of no great interest. On the other hand, it would become precious if, in seeking the cause of this hump, we hoped to penetrate new secrets.

Well, when, in the eighteenth century, Maupertuis and La Condamine braved such opposite climates, it was not solely to learn the shape of our planet, it was a question of the whole world-system.

If the earth was flattened, Newton triumphed and with him the doctrine of gravitation and the whole modern celestial mechanics.

And to-day, a century and a half after the victory of the Newtonians, think you geodesy has nothing more to teach us?

We know not what is within our globe. The shafts of mines and borings have let us know a layer of 1 or 2 kilometers thickness, that is to say, the millionth part of the total ma.s.s; but what is beneath?

Of all the extraordinary journeys dreamed by Jules Verne, perhaps that to the center of the earth took us to regions least explored.

But these deep-lying rocks we can not reach, exercise from afar their attraction which operates upon the pendulum and deforms the terrestrial spheroid. Geodesy can therefore weigh them from afar, so to speak, and tell us of their distribution. Thus will it make us really see those mysterious regions which Jules Verne only showed us in imagination.

This is not an empty illusion. M. Faye, comparing all the measurements, has reached a result well calculated to surprise us. Under the oceans, in the depths, are rocks of very great density; under the continents, on the contrary, are empty s.p.a.ces.

New observations will modify perhaps the details of these conclusions.

In any case, our venerated dean has shown us where to search and what the geodesist may teach the geologist, desirous of knowing the interior const.i.tution of the earth, and even the thinker wis.h.i.+ng to speculate upon the past and the origin of this planet.

And now, why have I ent.i.tled this chapter _French Geodesy_? It is because, in each country, this science has taken, more than all others, perhaps, a national character. It is easy to see why.

There must be rivalry. The scientific rivalries are always courteous, or at least almost always; in any case, they are necessary, because they are always fruitful. Well, in those enterprises which require such long efforts and so many collaborators, the individual is effaced, in spite of himself, of course; no one has the right to say: this is my work.

Therefore it is not between men, but between nations that rivalries go on.

So we are led to seek what has been the part of France. Her part I believe we are right to be proud of.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, long discussions arose between the Newtonians who believed the earth flattened, as the theory of gravitation requires, and Ca.s.sini, who, deceived by inexact measurements, believed our globe elongated. Only direct observation could settle the question. It was our Academy of Sciences that undertook this task, gigantic for the epoch.

While Maupertuis and Clairaut measured a degree of meridian under the polar circle, Bouguer and La Condamine went toward the Andes Mountains, in regions then under Spain which to-day are the Republic of Ecuador.

Our envoys were exposed to great hards.h.i.+ps. Traveling was not as easy as at present.

Truly, the country where Maupertuis operated was not a desert and he even enjoyed, it is said, among the Laplanders those sweet satisfactions of the heart that real arctic voyagers never know. It was almost the region where, in our days, comfortable steamers carry, each summer, hosts of tourists and young English people. But in those days Cook's agency did not exist and Maupertuis really believed he had made a polar expedition.

Perhaps he was not altogether wrong. The Russians and the Swedes carry out to-day a.n.a.logous measurements at Spitzbergen, in a country where there is real ice-cap. But they have quite other resources, and the difference of time makes up for that of lat.i.tude.

The name of Maupertuis has reached us much scratched by the claws of Doctor Akakia; the scientist had the misfortune to displease Voltaire, who was then the king of mind. He was first praised beyond measure; but the flatteries of kings are as much to be dreaded as their displeasure, because the days after are terrible. Voltaire himself knew something of this.

Voltaire called Maupertuis, my amiable master in thinking, marquis of the polar circle, dear flattener out of the world and Ca.s.sini, and even, flattery supreme, Sir Isaac Maupertuis; he wrote him: "Only the king of Prussia do I put on a level with you; he only lacks being a geometer."

But soon the scene changes, he no longer speaks of deifying him, as in days of yore the Argonauts, or of calling down from Olympus the council of the G.o.ds to contemplate his works, but of chaining him up in a madhouse. He speaks no longer of his sublime mind, but of his despotic pride, plated with very little science and much absurdity.

I care not to relate these comico-heroic combats; but permit me some reflections on two of Voltaire's verses. In his 'Discourse on Moderation' (no question of moderation in praise and criticism), the poet has written:

You have confirmed in regions drear What Newton discerned without going abroad.

These two verses (which replace the hyperbolic praises of the first period) are very unjust, and doubtless Voltaire was too enlightened not to know it.

Then, only those discoveries were esteemed which could be made without leaving one's house.

To-day, it would rather be theory that one would make light of.

This is to misunderstand the aim of science.

Is nature governed by caprice, or does harmony rule there? That is the question. It is when it discloses to us this harmony that science is beautiful and so worthy to be cultivated. But whence can come to us this revelation, if not from the accord of a theory with experiment? To seek whether this accord exists or if it fails, this therefore is our aim.

Consequently these two terms, which we must compare, are as indispensable the one as the other. To neglect one for the other would be nonsense. Isolated, theory would be empty, experiment would be blind; each would be useless and without interest.

Maupertuis therefore deserves his share of glory. Truly, it will not equal that of Newton, who had received the spark divine; nor even that of his collaborator Clairaut. Yet it is not to be despised, because his work was necessary, and if France, outstripped by England in the seventeenth century, has so well taken her revenge in the century following, it is not alone to the genius of Clairauts, d'Alemberts, Laplaces that she owes it; it is also to the long patience of the Maupertuis and the La Condamines.

We reach what may be called the second heroic period of geodesy. France is torn within. All Europe is armed against her; it would seem that these gigantic combats might absorb all her forces. Far from it; she still has them for the service of science. The men of that time recoiled before no enterprise, they were men of faith.

Delambre and Mechain were commissioned to measure an arc going from Dunkerque to Barcelona. This time there was no going to Lapland or to Peru; the hostile squadrons had closed to us the ways thither. But, though the expeditions are less distant, the epoch is so troubled that the obstacles, the perils even, are just as great.

In France, Delambre had to fight against the ill-will of suspicious munic.i.p.alities. One knows that the steeples, which are visible from so far, and can be aimed at with precision, often serve as signal points to geodesists. But in the region Delambre traversed there were no longer any steeples. A certain proconsul had pa.s.sed there, and boasted of knocking down all the steeples rising proudly above the humble abode of the sans-culottes. Pyramids then were built of planks and covered with white cloth to make them more visible. That was quite another thing: with white cloth! What was this rash person who, upon our heights so recently set free, dared to raise the hateful standard of the counter-revolution? It was necessary to border the white cloth with blue and red bands.

Mechain operated in Spain; the difficulties were other; but they were not less. The Spanish peasants were hostile. There steeples were not lacking: but to install oneself in them with mysterious and perhaps diabolic instruments, was it not sacrilege? The revolutionists were allies of Spain, but allies smelling a little of the stake.

"Without cease," writes Mechain, "they threaten to butcher us."