Popular Lectures on Scientific Subjects by H. HelmholtzThe Scientific Monthly, Vol. 71, No. 3 (Sep., 1950), pp. 210-211Published by: American Association for the Advancement of ScienceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20262 .

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LITERARY NOTIC POPULAR LECTURES ON SCIENTIFIC SUBJECTS. By H.

HELMHOLTZ, Professor of Physics in the University of Berlin. Translated by E. ATKINSON, Ph.D., F.C.S., Professor of Experimental Science, Hoff College. With an Introduction by Prof. Tyndall. New York: D. Ap- pleton & Co., 1873.

THIS is, in several respects, the most important sci- entific publication of the season, its interest being

due not alone to its valuable contents, but quite as much to the form in which they have been put by their illus- trious author. When the present MONT:IILY was started, surprise was expressed in various quarters at the broad scope of its discussions, which it was said went far be- yond the legitimate meaning of our title. Science being considered as a kind of tough and forbidding knowledge belonging to laboratories, observatories, and apothe- caries' shops, popular science was regarded as the same kind of knowledge loosely stated in common language. At the outset we rejected this view as narrow and false, holding that science, instead of pertaining to certain things, consists in a method of knowing, which applies to all things that can be known, and that popular science must be equally comprehensive. Science itself being pro- gressive, its great army of workers is constantly engaged in extending and correcting it by numberless processes of original investigation, while it is the office of popular science to bring its conclusions, applications, and results into the sphere of common thought. Learned men long neglected the duty they owed to the public to clothe the result of their labors in authorized and acceptable forms for general use, and the consequence was that this work was done by incompetent hands, and degenerated into mere amusement and recreation; but, with the progress of liberal opinion, the diffusion of education, and increasing respect for the rights and welfare of the people, eminent men of science have turned their atten- tion seriously to the task of embodying their ideas in popular form.

In his introduction to the present volume, Prof. Tyn- dall remarks: "One evening during my residence in Ber- lin, my friend Dr. Du Bois-Reymond put a pamphlet in my hands, remarking that it was the 'production of the first head in Europe since the death of Jacobi,' and that 'it ought to be translated into English.' " That "first head in Europe" was on the shoulders of Helm- holtz, and the pamphlet was his celebrated essay on the "Interaction of the Natural Forces," which has been ex- tensively circulated in this country, and is one of the most elegant and popular expositions of the doctrine of the "Conservation of Force" that has appeared in any language. The first complete work of Prof. Helmholtz in English is the volume now issued, consisting of popular lectures on scientific subjects. Speaking of these lectures in his preface, the author says: "If I may claim that

they have any leading thought, it would be that I have endeavored to illustrate the essence and the import of natural laws and their relation to the mental activity of man. This seems to me the chief interest and the chief need in lectures before a public whose education has been mainly literary." It is gratifying to note that this statement of the chief aim of popular science entirely coincides with the view presented in the prospectus of THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. It is not the illiter- ate that are to be addressed, but the classes that have re- ceived such cultivation as the prevailing educational sys- tem affords, while the development and illustration of natural laws in their bearing upon the higher nature and elements of man is [sic] the ultimate and most important end to be attained.

Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand Helmholtz was born at Potsdam in 1821. He studied medicine, and was at first military physician and afterward assistant at the Astro- nomical Museum at Berlin in 1848. From 1849 to 1852 he was Professor of Physiology in the University of K6nigsberg. He became Professor of Physiology at the University of Bonn in 1855, and in 1858 accepted the physiological chair in the University of Heidelberg. lie is now reestablished in Berlin as Professor in the univer- sity of that city. Prof. Helmholtz has attained a recog- nized preeminence in three great departments of knowl- edge-physiology, physics, and mathematics. He began with the study of physiology, but, finding that to be de- pendent upon physics, he proceeded to master the physi- cal field. But here, finding again that physics depends upon mathematics, he pushed on to the conquest of this department of science. His great works are on "Physio- logical Optics" and "The Physiology of Audition," and by his thorough acquaintance with physics and mathe- matics, he has greatly enriched and extended our knowledge of the science of these higher senses. Prof. Helmholtz's intellect is characterized by great breadth and synthetic grasp, which leads him to take large views, and treat the subjects he enters upon with com- prehensiveness. The opening and closing papers of the present volume-the first, "On the Relation of Natural Science to Science in General," and the last, "On the Aim and Progress of Physical Science"-are admirable examples of this broad judicial treatment of the sub- jects discussed. His statement of the reactions of science and philosophy in Germany, and the influence of the German universities upon contemporary thought, in the first paper, is especially admirable. The volume also contains very able articles upon his special subjects of investigation-one "On the Physiological Causes of Harmony in Music," and another elaborate paper, in three parts, "On the Recent Progress of the Theory of Vision." There is also a very interesting lecture "On Goethe's Scientific Researches,'" and an elaborate dis-

210 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

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cussion of glacial phenomena. Two papers are also given "On the Interaction and 'Conservation of Forces," a sub- ject which Prof. Helmholtz has pursued independently, and which in these expositions is presented in its funda- mental principles. Numerous illustrations enhance the instructiveness of the volume, which, though compactly written, is still remarkably clear inl its explanations. Prof. Helmholtz is an eminent master of the art of statement, but, as his thoughts appear in a foreign language, the force and finish of the original composition are not to be looked for. Yet the several translations of this volume by Professors Eve, Ellis, Atkinson, Tyndall, and Drs. Flight and Pye-Smith, have been made with great care, so that the work is as attractive and readable in style as it is solid and instructive in its thought. We commend this book to all who are interested in the higher scientific problems of the age, as treated by one of its master- minds.-The Popular Science Monthly, 1873, 3, 513.

ANNUAL RECORD OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY FOR 1873. Edited by SPENCER J. BAIRD. New York: Harper & Bros. 714 pp., 12mo. Price, $2.00. T HIS volume presents a very large amount of

valuable and interesting information in compact form, being in fact a history of progress in science and art for the year. The main part of the book is prefaced with a brief summary of the year's progress. The mat- ter is presented in divisions named according to their nature, in general scientific terms, as Mathematics and Astronomy, Terrestrial Physics, and Meteorology, etc. Much important knowledge bearing directly on the ordinary affairs of life is to be gleaned from the divisions on Agriculture and Household Economy. For instance, the latter contains some valuable facts about lightning and lightning conductors. Chimneys should be kept clean, as one lined with a thick layer of soot is dangerous, being apt to conduct the current of electricity into the house. The costly copper rods now so popular are con- demned, and the ordinary galvanizecl iron wire, No. 4, recommended instead. A conductor, to be effective, should have no joints nor acute angles, and the lower end should rest in the ground, while the upper should be tipped with a gilded or polished point. Conductors are also likely to become impaired from use, and there- fore need occasional examination and repairing. In the division of Materia Medica, a simple and effectual method is given for distinguishing real from apparent death. This is in simply tying a tight ligature around a finger of the supposed corpse; if death is only appar- ent, the end of the finger will shortly become red.

About meteors and comets, we are told, Prof. Proctor has concluded that comets are detached masses of mat- ter thrown off by planet:s like Jupiter, Neptune, and Uranus, while in a molten condition. Meteors are frag- mentary parts of disintegrated comets. The inflam- matory character of meteors has also been established. In May, 1873, two men in North Germany observed a falling meteor strike against a church-tower, and re- bound with loud detonation to a housetop. The house

soon became enveloped in flames, which spread and destroyed several adjoining buildings. The most star- tling statement, probably, comes from Secchi, the great Italian astronomer. This is that the sun varies in size. Secchi's hypothesis is that the sun's photosphere as seen by us is a gaseous envelope, continually, and per- haps periodically, changing in apparent size.-The Po pular Science Monthlv, 1874- 5 249.

THE GREAT ICE AGE AND ITS RELATION TO THE AN- TIQUITY OF MAN. By JAMES GEIKIE, F.R.S.E., etc. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 8vo., 525 pp. Price, $2.50.

THERE are many persons who would listen with an air of scornful incredulity to the statement that

the hills and valleys of New York and New England, which summer now clothes with a mantle of luxuriant verdure, were once a dreary, desolate waste, covered up by a crust of ice many hundred feet thick. Nevertheless, the fact is indisputable; the mountains, the rocks, the configuration of the soil, even the fragmentary stones that lie upon the surface, point silently, eloquently, and immovably to the fact. Geologists had long noticed, in valleys adjoining mountainous districts, certain long, low ridges, called "sowbacks," running parallel to each other and trending down the valley. They had dug into these ridges and picked out flat, oblong stones, with strange scratches upon their surfaces. They had noticed that, while the mountainsides looked jagged and rugged from below, from above they presented a rounded and undulating outline to the very base of the mountain. It was also noticed that the rocks on the mountainsides displayed on their undulating or upper surface the same mysterious scratches or striae that were observed on the stones embedded in the ridges below. All of these signs greatly puzzled the geologists, and various theories were invented to account for them, but their true significance was not dreamed of until the late Prof. Agassiz, from the study of Alpine geology, announced that they were the results of one and the same cause-glacial action; that is, that the whole face of the country was covered to the depth of two or three thousand feet with solid ice, which, in gradually creeping toward the ocean to shed its bergs, had worn the mountainsides into waves; broken, scratched, and transported the rock to distant points, and furrowed up the soil of the valleys through which it continued to crawl seaward. Unmistakable evidence existed that this arctic condition of climate prevailed all over Europe, Asia, and America, northward of 450 north latitude; that is to say, that the vast area com- prehended within that circle was once covered with ice as completely as parts of Greenland and the rest of the country immediately around the North Pole is [sic] now covered. Of course no life could exist under such conditions, and it was therefore supposed that the advent of man, within that circle at least, must have occurred subsequent to their passing away. It is on this point that Mr. Geikie's book throws a flood of light. He describes the evidences of the glacial condition with admirable skill and clearness, and then nrnrc.-d. ttn

September 19950 211

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