Inches or Metres?
496 THE COMMONWEAL September 30, 1925 statement a little carefully, for it seems to clash with one also recently made by Professor Millikan, of Chicago—a very distinguished physicist and...
...There is a certain change, or series of changes, which doubtless Osborne alludes to, but they have no parity with what is ordinarily meant by evolution...
...A similar instance of dogged opposition followed the proclamation of Pope Gregory in 1582, making a much needed reform in the calendar of the year...
...To most, it clearly means an advance from a simpler to a more complicated form and, what is more, it is irreversible...
...Further, we know that the differences between their atoms consist in the numbers of charges of electricity which they contain as their nuclei...
...The moral of it all is that there is a lot of very loose talk about "evolution," and that the theory which really corresponds to that term in the minds of scientific men, is by no means a key which will enter the lock which, at present, guards this scientific problem...
...The confusion arises from that loose employment of terms which is one of the cardinal sins of modern scientific writing— due unquestionably to the lack of any kind of philosophical training on the part of at least 99 percent of men of science...
...We now know that that is incorrect, and that these things can and do change, and even that— at present in a very, very limited manner—we can change them from one thing into another...
...What is the technical sense of that term...
...All evolution is conceived as working up from the single cell through the multiple...
...But he hits, at times, and when he does knock an electron out, he changes the element...
...for though there is such a thing as degeneration, that is not the passage—say—of a vertebrate back to an invertebrate...
...One feels inclined to believe that the Dearborn Independent writer would have a hard time to show that in America the metric system was altogether alien...
...We are on the inch basis," continues the writer in the Dearborn Independent, "have won the manufacturing supremacy of the world on the inch basis, and yet we have been actually endangered by the metric proposal which arose out of academic politics and has no part in the manufacturing growth of America...
...and "change," though it may be brought about by evolution, is by no means "evolution...
...But Osborne is talking merely about "change...
...From 1661, when Richard Boyle published his Skeptical Chymist, down to a very recent date, it was believed that there were a number of substances— generally estimated at about eighty—called "elements" which were, ab initio, and aboslutely incapable of change...
...T'HE opponents of the adoption in the United •*¦ States of the metric system of weights and measures have enlisted the championship of Mr...
...No doubt the same resort of this form of Americanism will recur to the minds of those not very old people who heard in their youth the peddlers in the streets of New York still shouting their merchandise at a shilling a peck, to show that a custom in trade dies hard...
...INCHES OR METRES...
...Millikan is talking of evolution as we know it, as a subject of debate at Dayton and elsewhere...
...496 THE COMMONWEAL September 30, 1925 statement a little carefully, for it seems to clash with one also recently made by Professor Millikan, of Chicago—a very distinguished physicist and the recipient of a Nobel prize...
...It will not be necessary to throw out the old machines, but gradually to provide new ones, measuring in a way that will not cause a blush to Americans faced with the practical and simple metric systems of the greater part of the world...
...the invertebrate, the vertebrate, to man...
...Clearly Osborne and Millikan are talking about different things...
...Henry Ford's redoubtable Dearborn Independent...
...But to the one below, not the one above—change, not evolution...
...There, doubtless, he follows in the line of those who would agree with Loeb, that until some scientific man has developed a new species from an old one, evolution must remain an unproved theory...
...The same sort of argument is alleged in favor of the currency of pounds, shillings and pence, which constitutes a positive nuisance in the money affairs of the world today...
...certainly the founders of our country do not seem to have thought so when they established the decimal basis...
...An American traveler abroad once remarked that when he was in Europe he never knew how far away he was from any place, how heavy anything weighed, how large anything was, or what the thermometer recorded...
...The electrons rotate inside the atom like "flies in a great cathedral," says Sir Oliver Lodge...
...We can realize that "as to the American machine shop—the cost of establishing the metric system there, is beyond computation...
...It is only within the last ten years that Russia and Greece, as a sort of consequence to their revolutions, have accepted this obviously modern computation of the year...
...and as the scientist has "to fire into the brown," he must very frequently miss...
...The monarchies of the continent immediately adopted it, but it took the British 149 years before the Calendar Amendment Act—Lord Chesterfield's act—was passed in 1751, establishing "the new style" in place of the calendar of Julius Caesar...
...We are not concerned with the accuracy of this classical idea, but are merely setting down what it is in the estimation of today...
...To ignore the feelings and intelligence of the rest of the world, and to cast reflections on the opinions of professional people at home, smacks of an insularity and provincialism that will not deserve very much consideration from the thoughtful...
...In this sense, there is no such thing as proved evolution in the physical world...
...It has no significance aside from British tradition, and the difficulties of a monetary change are hardly an adequate excuse for its perpetuation...
...and in the issue for August 15, under the significant title, The Metric System Means Muddle, a writer asks—"Should we upset things industrial and domestic by substituting alien methods for American...
...He says—"the pathetic thing is that we have scientists who are trying to prove evolution, which no scientist can prove...
Vol. 2 • September 1925 • No. 21
