From Immigrant to Inventor

by Michael Pupin

Now, sir, I maintain that the true spirit of the scientific research, embracing as it does zeal in search for truth, devotion to duty, which such a search imposes, faith in good, as the normal and necessary result of such a search ... that such a spirit is, at this moment, one of the most needed elements in the political progress of our country.

What I maintain, then, is, that this zeal for truth as truth, this faith in the good forever allied to the truth, this devotion to duty, as the result of such faith and zeal, constitute probably the most needed element at this moment in the political regeneration of this country, and that, therefore, the example of our little army of true devotees of science has an exceeding preciousness.

Their zeal, their devotion, their faith, furnish one of those very protests which are most needed against that low tone of political ideas which in its lower strata is political corruption. Their life gives that very example of a high spirit, aim, and work, which the time so greatly needs.

The aims and aspirations and the life of American scientists have not changed since Andrew White spoke these memorable words fifty years ago. A life guided by aims and aspirations such as he describes is a life of saints and not of ordinary materialistic clay. Such a life cannot be attained without unceasing nursing of the spirit and unrelenting suppression of the flesh. Men of Andrew White’s clearness of vision will certainly tell you not only that the disciplined army of American scientists mobilized under the flag of the National Research Council will not interfere with the spiritual development of our national life, but that, on the contrary, nothing else will advance that spiritual development so rapidly and so irresistibly. The intellectual and spiritual discipline which, according to White, our nation needs, is certainly one of the ideals of these men of science.

I shall mention now two other ideals. Just watch on some summer morning how the early rays of the sun arouse the slumbering rose from its blissful dreams, and remember that the rose responds because its body and soul are tuned to the melodies which the glorious sunlight is pouring into its enchanted ear. Remember also that what I have just described is not merely a flowery figure of speech, but that it is a concise description of a beautiful physical relationship, which science has discovered in the life of the rose. I proceed a step further, and ask: Have you ever feasted your joyful eye upon the beauties of the landscape when on a golden May day you behold the blossoming fruit-trees cover as far as your vision can reach the velvety green turf of the numerous orchards of some blessed countryside? What does each of these fruit-trees with its countless blossoms suggest to your imagination? “The honey-hearted fruit of the mellow summer season,” many of you will say. Yes, the blossom and the fruit are so far as the untutored mind can see the beginning and the end of the short chain of apparently commonplace events which make up the annually returning life activity of the humble fruit-tree. Who cares what happens between so beautiful a beginning and so satisfactory an end? The scientist cares; his trained eye detects here an enchanting tale. Every one of those fruit-trees on the golden May day appears to him like a bride arrayed in the gayest of wedding raiment, waiting for the approaching bridegroom. Its countless blossoms invite with longing lips the life-giving kiss of the heavenly groom, the glorious sun. The balmy breath of this golden bridegroom fills the air, kissing the lips of every flower in the gay and festive orchards, and in the juicy pastures and meadows. A heavenly thrill fills the hearts of these enamoured blossoms, when, with sighs of delicious perfume, they, like blushing brides, respond to the tender caresses of the heavenly bridegroom! Yes, there will be honey-hearted fruit in the mellow summer season; the busy bee knows it when it sucks its honey from the joyful bosoms of the blessed brides; it knows that this honey is the first message to you that the marriage between the heavenly bridegroom, the golden sun, and the terrestrial brides, the countless blossoms, will be blessed with many a heavenly offspring, the honey-hearted fruit of the mellow summer season.

This is, I admit, somewhat unusual language for a scientist to use. It is, according to the opinion of many, unsuited to the description of what people call the cold facts of science. They call them so, but is their language justified? The physical facts of science are not cold, unless your soul and your heart are cold. There is white heat somewhere in every physical fact when we decipher correctly the message which it conveys to us. A physical fact denotes activity, otherwise it could not penetrate the depths of our consciousness. Activity is life, in the broadest sense of this word. Death is cold, but life is hot, and it is gross abuse of language to speak of cold facts of science. It is such language that creates prejudice against science, representing its methods as well as its results as devoid of everything which fires the emotional side of man. Every physical fact has two terminals; one is in our consciousness, and the other is in some star which is rejoicing in the blazing vigor of its youth. Just as the life activity of the early blossoms, and of the honey-hearted fruit of the mellow summer season, has its origin in the life-giving breath of the heavenly bridegroom, the glorious sun, so every terrestrial activity, every physical fact, with one of its terminals anchored in our consciousness, can trace its origin to the life-giving breath of some heavenly bridegroom, some burning star. Just explore the path which leads from one of these terminals to the other, and you will discover on each side of that path those beauties which continually thrill the heart of a scientific man. Do that and you will never again speak of the cold facts of science.

Let me for illustration pursue one of these paths for a little distance. Fifty years ago, when as a member of a herdsman’s squad of boys I watched the stars on the black background of a summer midnight sky, I felt that their fight was a language proclaiming the glory of God.

Has science changed that vision of the early childhood days? What does that light convey to my mind to-day? The answer to this question was born during my lifetime, and the gradual unfolding of its profound meaning gave me the sweetest thrills of my life. Faraday and Maxwell told me that light is a manifestation of the activity of electrical force. The discovery of the Roentgen rays and of radioactivity taught me that the primordial sources of electrical force are the positive and the negative electrons, the electrons and the protons, the building stones of matter, and that light is radiation, that is, propagation into space of the electrical energy from the atomic structures in which the electrons with their motions determine the character of the structure and its energy content. Then came Thomson, the same Thomson who scared me away from Cambridge, because I thought that he was too young to be my teacher of physics, and he suggested that the electrons possess an inertial mass on account of the electrical energy which is stored up in them. This suggestion led to the generalization that all electrical energy has mass possessing not only inertia but also gravitational action. Who does not know to-day of this generalization, and who has not heard of Einstein and of his verified prophecy that a beam of light will be deflected by gravitational force? A beam of light represents electrical energy and electrical energy is gravitationally active just like any other mass considered by Newton. A star radiating light radiates electrical energy, and, therefore, it throws out to us a part of its own mass. When this radiation reaches us we can say, therefore, without indulging in figures of speech that the star is visiting us. I am not indulging in a flowery figure of speech when I call solar radiation the balmy breath of the heavenly bridegroom, the glorious sun.

Fifty years ago, instructed by David’s psalms, I found in the light of the stars a heavenly language which proclaims the glory of God, but I did not know how that language reached me, and I hoped that some day I might find out. That hope was in my soul when I landed at Castle Garden. To-day science tells me that the stars themselves bring it to me. Each burning star is a focus of energy, of life-giving activity, which it pours out lavishly into every direction of the energy-hungry space; it pours out the life of its own heart, in order to beget new life. Oh, what a beautiful vista that opens to our imagination, and what new beauties are disclosed by science in the meaning of the words in Genesis: “He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” The light of the stars is a part of the life-giving breath of God. I never look now upon the starlit vault of the heaven without feeling this divine breath and its quickening action upon my soul. But here I must stop. I feel the heavy hand of the fundamentalist pulling me down, and the icy chill of his disapproving voice reminds me that his theology will not permit an interpretation of the words of Genesis which cannot be understood by people whose knowledge of science is about the same as that of the Assyrians and Chaldeans of several thousand years ago.

I have taken some pains here to point to some beauties in one particular department of physical science. Such beauties abound in every other department of science, and they are in no respect inferior to those which form the subject of the fine arts, like music, painting, sculpture, and poetry. To cultivate the beautiful in science, is, according to my view, the second ideal of the many loyal workers associated in the National Research Council. Will that kind of science interfere with the spiritual development of our national life?

The third ideal may be described as follows: All changeable things are subject to the play of evolution, and are mortal, from the tiny flower in the field to the awe-inspiring cloud figure in the heavens which is called the nebula of Orion. But the laws which the stars and the planets obey in their paths through the heavens never change nor grow old; they are immutable, they are immortal. The elements of the microcosm, the electrons in the atom, are as far as we know immutable and immortal, because man knows no natural process by which the electrons and the laws which they obey can ever be changed. They are not the product of any natural process of evolution known to man. To discover the immutable laws which this substantia, this immutable foundation of the universe, obeys is the highest aim of scientific research. The existence of these eternally unchangeable things brings us face to face with a power which is the eternally immovable background of all physical phenomena. We feel intuitively that science will never penetrate the mysteries beyond it, but our faith encourages us in the belief that there behind the impenetrable veil of this eternal background is the throne of a divine power, the soul of the physical world, the activity of which we contemplate in our research of physical phenomena. I am sure that many loyal members of the National Research Council believe that scientific research will bring us closer to this divinity than any theology invented by man ever did. The cultivation of this belief is certainly one of the ideals of American science, represented by the men who are associated in the National Research Council. In the face of this ideal, there certainly cannot be any conflict between science and religion.

I firmly believe that in the National Research Council we have an organization which represents the mobilized scientific intellect of the United States, which in the pursuit of its lofty ideals will some day succeed in creating in our democracy a profound respect for the services of the highly trained intellect. A democracy which believes that its destiny should be intrusted to the leadership of men of training, discipline, and lofty aspirations and knows how to secure the services of such men is a democracy which is safe for the world. Such a democracy, I believe, was the vision of the scientific men who, fifty years ago, started the great movement for higher endeavor. Such a democracy will lead some day to what I call ideal democracy, that is, a state organism in which each human unit contributes its definite share to the physical and mental activity of the organism. The relation of the individual to the social body in an ideal democracy, as I conceive it, will be very similar to the relation of our cells to our body. Activities of individuals will be coordinated, just as the activities of our cells are, so that one composite mind will guide the resultant activities of the whole social body. This is the mind which my friend, General J. J. Carty, the distinguished engineer and philosopher, calls the “supermind.” A well selected name, because it suggests the name “superman” for ideal democracy, and thus attaches to this somewhat vague concept of recent years a definite meaning. The general is a strong believer in the theory that by evolutionary steps we are gradually approaching the state of ideal democracy. He has lived some forty years in the most perfect industrial organization of the world, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, and, naturally, he cannot help being an ardent follower and enthusiastic advocate of the belief in the advent of ideal democracy. But is there anything in the history of the evolutionary progress of the world which justifies this comforting belief? I think there is.