The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 | Page 6

well be proud. Science reads the secret of the distant star and
anatomises the atom; foretells the date of the comet's return and
predicts the kinds of chickens that will hatch from a dozen eggs;
discovers the laws of the wind that bloweth where it listeth and reduces

to order the disorder of disease. Science is always setting forth on
Columbus voyages, discovering new worlds and conquering them by
understanding. For Knowledge means Foresight and Foresight means
Power.
The idea of Evolution has influenced all the sciences, forcing us to
think of everything as with a history behind it, for we have travelled far
since Darwin's day. The solar system, the earth, the mountain ranges,
and the great deeps, the rocks and crystals, the plants and animals, man
himself and his social institutions--all must be seen as the outcome of a
long process of Becoming. There are some eighty-odd chemical
elements on the earth to-day, and it is now much more than a
suggestion that these are the outcome of an inorganic evolution,
element giving rise to element, going back and back to some primeval
stuff, from which they were all originally derived, infinitely long ago.
No idea has been so powerful a tool in the fashioning of New
Knowledge as this simple but profound idea of Evolution, that the
present is the child of the past and the parent of the future. And with the
picture of a continuity of evolution from nebula to social systems
comes a promise of an increasing control--a promise that Man will
become not only a more accurate student, but a more complete master
of his world.
It is characteristic of modern science that the whole world is seen to be
more vital than before. Everywhere there has been a passage from the
static to the dynamic. Thus the new revelations of the constitution of
matter, which we owe to the discoveries of men like Professor Sir J. J.
Thomson, Professor Sir Ernest Rutherford, and Professor Frederick
Soddy, have shown the very dust to have a complexity and an activity
heretofore unimagined. Such phrases as "dead" matter and "inert"
matter have gone by the board.
The new theory of the atom amounts almost to a new conception of the
universe. It bids fair to reveal to us many of nature's hidden secrets.
The atom is no longer the indivisible particle of matter it was once
understood to be. We know now that there is an atom within the
atom--that what we thought was elementary can be dissociated and

broken up. The present-day theories of the atom and the constitution of
matter are the outcome of the comparatively recent discovery of such
things as radium, the X-rays, and the wonderful revelations of such
instruments as the spectroscope and other highly perfected scientific
instruments.
The advent of the electron theory has thrown a flood of light on what
before was hidden or only dimly guessed at. It has given us a new
conception of the framework of the universe. We are beginning to
know and realise of what matter is made and what electric phenomena
mean. We can glimpse the vast stores of energy locked up in matter.
The new knowledge has much to tell us about the origin and
phenomena, not only of our own planet, but other planets, of the stars,
and the sun. New light is thrown on the source of the sun's heat; we can
make more than guesses as to its probable age. The great question
to-day is: is there one primordial substance from which all the varying
forms of matter have been evolved?
But the discovery of electrons is only one of the revolutionary changes
which give modern science an entrancing interest.
As in chemistry and physics, so in the science of living creatures there
have been recent advances that have changed the whole prospect. A
good instance is afforded by the discovery of the "hormones," or
chemical messengers, which are produced by ductless glands, such as
the thyroid, the supra-renal, and the pituitary, and are distributed
throughout the body by the blood. The work of physiologists like
Professor Starling and Professor Bayliss has shown that these chemical
messengers regulate what may be called the "pace" of the body, and
bring about that regulated harmony and smoothness of working which
we know as health. It is not too much to say that the discovery of
hormones has changed the whole of physiology. Our knowledge of the
human body far surpasses that of the past generation.
The persistent patience of microscopists and technical improvements
like the "ultramicroscope" have greatly increased our knowledge of the
invisible world of life. To the bacteria of a past generation have been
added a multitude of microscopic animal microbes, such as that which

causes Sleeping Sickness. The life-histories and