THE INSUBSTANTIAL PAGEANT

Sir James Jeans speaking in Sanders Theatre last night presented the physicist's point of view regarding the outcome of the universe. The English scientist has concluded, without the unanimous approval of his fellow physicists, that matter continuously passing into pure radiation will eventually leave the cosmos devoid of substance in its tangible form.

There is no more fascinating subject than modern physics. Science, always, since the days of Democritus and Lucretius, a field fertile to the romantic imagination, is more rational in its severity and yet more romantic in its doctrine and possibility than ever before. Philosophy, which Professor Whitehead has called the architectural plan, has been hard pressed during the last century. The scientists seem to be building and destroying before the architect has drawn a line, instead of as previously, the architects drawing and destroying plans before the scientist has lifted an unknown into the position of a conscious reality.

Sir James' portrayal of the probable far future is scientific, full of romance, but not new. Nor is there radicalism nor lack of romance in the assertions of prominent dissenting scientists who say that matter is constantly being reincarnated out of pure radiation in the depth of space. But modern science has taught a vigorous doctrine of scopticism, the suspension of belief. And it is probable that Sir James has more definite scientific grounds for his statements than have his opponents for their more hopeful ones.

The answer to the question is better left to the scientist than to the philosopher. And yet within the last few years, leading scientists have been professing tremendous humility; in honest doubt of meaning of their discoveries, they are turning to the philosopher and the poet in search of a meaning. Having pierced dark matter and widened into the realms of insubstantial light, there is an urgency for meaning. To that point all searchers return. And one is inclined to think that it will be the philosopher or the poet who does provide a meaning. For man has never been satisfied with knowing, but has constantly sought to take his knowledge into the bosom of understanding.