John Fritz, who was the first recipient. Other recipients of the medal have been Lord Kelvin, George Westinghouse, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Alva Edison, Charles T. Porter, Alfred Noble, Sir William Henry White, Robert W. Hunt, John Edison Sweet, James Douglas, Elihu Thomson, Henry Marion Howe, J. Waldo Smith, George W. Goethals and Orville Wright. DR. GEORGE ELLERY HALE, director of the Mount Wilson Observatory and chairman of the National Research Council, has been appointed a member of the Committee on Intellectual Cooperation of the League of Nations, which was recently formed to promote research throughout the world and to facilitate the interchange of scientific information. Other scientific members of the committee are Professor Einstein and Mme. Curie. THE American Museum of Natural History has had its endowment largely increased through contributions from John D. Rockefeller, Jr., George F. Baker, and the settlement of the estate of Amos F. Eno. The Rockefeller gift of $1,000,000 will make it possible for the museum to carry on its educational work throughout the city without impairing funds needed for scientific research. Mr. Baker's gift of $200,000 supplements a recent one of $100,000. ARRANGEMENTS have been made to supply Russian men of science with the results of American scientific work accomplished since 1914. Under the chairmanship of Dr. Vernon Kellogg, secretary of the National Research Council, an American Committee to Aid Russian Scientists with Scientific Literature has been organized. Other members of the committee are Dr. L. O. Howard, chief of the Bureau of Entomology of the Department of Agriculture, Dr. David White, chief geologist, U. S. Geological Survey, and Dr. Raphael Zon, chief, forest investigations, U. S. Forest Service. This committee has arranged with the American Relief Administration to receive contributions of scientific literature at New York and transport them to Russia. It is a voluntary and temporary organization with headquarters at 1701 Massachusetts Avenue, Washington, D. C. Our Subscribers Include: J' UST as America leads the world in recon- The revolutions in thought and progress, brought COPYRIGHTED 1920 ENCYCLOPEDIA AMERICANA CORPORATION 27 WILLIAM ST., NEW YORK PEOPLE'S GAS BLDG., CHICAGO NAME Please send descriptive literature - AMERICANA The Boston Library says: Ο MONTHLY SEPTEMBER, 1922 THE REASONABLENESS OF SCIENCE1 By Professor W. M. DAVIS HARVARD UNIVERSITY A FABLE OF THE TIDES NCE upon a time-for science also has its fables-there dwelt a hermit on the shore of the ocean, where he observed the tides. He measured the period and the range of their rise and fall and, patiently tabulating his records, discovered that the tides run like clock-work. The interval between two high tides was determined to be about 12 hours and 26 minutes; the range from low water to high water was found to vary systematically, being greater one week and smaller the next, the total variation running its course in 14 days; more singular still, the high tides were found to exhibit an alternating inequality, such that, if they were numbered in order, the even-numbered would be stronger than the odd-numbered for two weeks and then the odd-numbered would be stronger than the even-numbered for two weeks; this cycle of alternating inequality completing itself in 28 days. The hermit then wishing to extend his observations, decided to travel overland to another ocean and learn whether the tides behaved in the same way there also. Now at the same epoch, but far away in the center of a great continental desert, a recluse lived in a cave, thinking and reflecting. One problem in particular engrossed his thoughts. He knew Newton's law of gravitation, and he asked himself what other consequences ought to follow from it besides the revolution of the planets around the sun and of the moons around their planets. He at last convinced himself that if the earth and the moon attract each other, the moon must produce a system of what he called earthdeforming forces, disposed in such a way as to strain the earth's 1 Oration delivered at the annual meeting of the Harvard Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, in Cambridge, Mass., June 19, 1922. VOL. XV.-13. crust, tending to raise it on the sides of the earth toward the moon and opposite the moon, so that at any one point on the rotating earth, the crust should be raised twice in a lunar day, or every 12 hours and 26 minutes; also, that similar but weaker earthdeforming forces produced by the sun should be combined with those produced by the moon so that the resulting total strains in the earth's crust would be stronger and weaker every 14 days; and furthermore, that as the moon is north of the sky equator for one half of a lunation and south of it for the other half-Alas, that you dwellers in roofed houses are so little acquainted with the sky as not to know of your own seeing that the moon's course does carry it obliquely across the sky equator and back again every month!-but as the moon does move in this manner, the recluse saw that the deforming forces which tend to raise the earth's crust at any point must exhibit a sequence of alternating inequalities every 28 days. And beside these rhythmic variations in a little more than half a day, in 14 days, and in 28 days, he worked out several other variations of even longer periods. But his calculations also showed that the rhythmic forces were too weak to deform the stiff earth's crust perceptibly. "If only," he thought to himself, "some large part of the earth's surface were covered with a deep sheet of water, surely the deforming forces would make the yielding water sheet rise and fall every 12 hours and 26 minutes, with a variation of range every 14 days, and an alternating inequality of rise every 28 days, and so on." He thereupon resolved to travel into other regions and learn, in case a vast sheet of water were anywhere discovered, whether it really did exhibit rhythmic changes of level in systematic periods such as, according to his calculations, it ought to exhibit. OBSERVATION, INVENTION AND DEDUCTION Curiously enough it happened that about this time the hermit reached a caravansery where he met an alert-looking individual who proved to be an inventor-not an inventor of machines but of hypotheses and theories and explanations. The hermit told him about the tides and their periodic variations, and asked: "What do you suppose makes them go?" The inventor thought a moment and then said: "Perhaps the tides rise and fall because Old Mother Earth is slowly breathing; or perhaps, inasmuch as you say the tides vary every 12 hours and 26 minutes, or twice in a lunar day, they may possibly be driven by the moon." "How can they be driven by anything that is so far away in the sky, and why should one moon make two high tides in one lunar day?" asked the hermit. Just then the recluse came in and, approaching the other two, inquired: "Can you tell me whether there is any |