28. Reminiscences of Lord Kelvin
The late Lord Kelvin was one of the most fascinating personalities in the learned world. He uttered with a delightful simplicity the thoughts, however romantic and fanciful, which bubbled up in his wonderful brain. It was because he was so much of a poet that he was so great a man of science. Atoms and molecules and vortices, and the vibrations and gyrations of ether, and “sorting demons” were all pictured in his mind’s eye, and used as counters of thought to give shape and the equivalent of tangible reality to his conceptions. By such conceptions he was able to present to himself and his listeners the complex mechanisms of crystals, of liquids, of gases, of electrical and magnetic currents, and the endless astounding proceedings of rays of light unsuspected by the ordinary man.
I think the last occasion on which he spoke in public was after Sir David Gill’s brilliant address to the British Association at Leicester last August. Lord Kelvin was sitting close to me on that occasion, and I noticed that he never moved his gaze from the speaker. He followed Sir David’s account of stars, whose distance is stated by the number of years it takes for their light to travel to this earth, like an enraptured schoolboy, and cheered when the evidence for the existence of two great streams of movement of the heavenly bodies, in opposite directions, going no one knows whither, coming no one knows whence, was sketched to us by the lecturer. In proposing a vote of thanks to Sir David Gill, Lord Kelvin burst into a sort of rhapsody, in which, with unaffected enthusiasm, he declared that we had been taken on a journey far more wonderful than that of Aladdin on the enchanted carpet; we had been carried to the remotest stars and well-nigh round the universe, and brought back safely to Leicester on the wings of science, and the most marvellous thing about it all was that it is true!
A few weeks before this Lord Kelvin was at the dinner in celebration of the jubilee of the foundation of the Chemical Society. In the speech which he then made he referred to the painful accident of a year or so ago which we had all so much regretted, when he had burnt his hand accidentally in some experiments with phosphorus, and had had to carry his arm in a sling for some weeks. “Lord Rayleigh, the president of the Royal Society,” he said, “has just told us how, as a boy, he gave proof of his devotion to chemical science by burning his fingers with phosphorus—but I think my devotion must be considered greater than his, for I burnt my fingers very badly with phosphorus only last year, when I was 83 years old. It was at the end of April. My friends said I was old enough to know better, and it should have happened, not at the end of April, but on the first day, of that month.” Lord Kelvin was associated in work in the sixties and seventies with another splendid man, Tait, of Edinburgh, who, besides being a great professor of “Natural Philosophy,” and joint author of the celebrated treatise known as Thomson and Tait, was a great athlete—a golfer of the first class, a first-rate billiard player, and a wise lover of good ale, which he drank and gave to his friends to drink, whilst he discoursed as few, if any, to my knowledge, can now do, of things philosophical, mathematical, and humane.
29. The So-called Jargon of Science
It is often discussed as to whether science fails to obtain the attention of the public and to excite intelligent interest, owing to the obscure language which lecturers and writers use when attempting to expound scientific views and discoveries to “the ordinary man,” or whether the fault lies with the “ordinary man” himself, who is too frivolous to bother about following carefully the words addressed to him, and, moreover, has never learnt even the A B C of science at school. It is certainly the case, as Professor Turner, the Oxford professor of astronomy, has pointed out, that a popular lecturer could tell his auditors a good deal more in an hour if they already had the elements of his subject at their fingers’ ends than he can under the existing state of neglect of school education in the natural sciences. That, however, seems to be obvious enough, and does not touch the real question.
I have had a long experience, both in lecturing myself and in assisting in the training of others to lecture and also to inform the uninstructed public by means of museum-labels and popular notes. It seems to me that there are a large number of men who, even though capable of expressing themselves clearly under usual circumstances, yet fail to do so when trying to expound or to teach, in consequence of three distinct faults, any one of which is enough to render their discourse or writing hopelessly obscure to “the man in the street.” These are, first, a kind of pride in using special terms and modes of expression which infatuates the lecturer or writer, and leads him, without reflection, to an attitude of mind expressed by saying, “That is the correct statement about this matter, short and true. If you don’t understand it, there are others who can. You can leave it alone; it is not worth my while to spend time and trouble to explain further; it is for you to give yourselves the trouble to find out what I mean.” The second fault is a real incapacity (which occurs in many learned men) to realise the state of mind of the uninstructed man, woman or child who eagerly desires to be instructed: this is want of imagination and want of sympathy. There is no cure for those who fail as teachers for either of these two reasons.
The third fault is much more widely at work, and the most kindly sympathetic lecturers and writers—but more especially lecturers—often suffer from it and could easily amend their practice. It consists in the attempt to tell the audience or reader too much—vastly too much—in the limit of one hour, or within the space of a few lines or pages. This failure is well-nigh universal. I have heard a distinguished discoverer, an eloquent and able man, try to tell a completely ignorant audience in one hour the results of years of experiment and work by many men on the electrical currents observed in nerves. The audience did not know what is meant by an electrical current, nor anything about nerves, nor a single one of the technical terms necessarily used by the lecturer. The task was an impossible one. In six lectures it might have been accomplished, and great delight and increase of understanding afforded to the listeners instead of perplexity and a sense of their own incapacity and the hopeless obscurity of science. That, I am convinced, is the real trouble, viz., the attempt to tell too much in a short time, the failure by the lecturer to arrange his exposition in a series of well-considered, definite steps, each exciting the desire to know more, and each given sufficient time and experimental illustration or pictorial demonstration to lodge its meaning and value safely and soundly in the tender brain of the ignorant but willing listener. I am convinced that there is in very many lecturers a tendency to try to crowd and compress into one lecture what should occupy ten—if the willing and intelligent but ignorant listener is to feel happy and is really to understand what is said and done for his instruction. A special difficulty also arises from the fact that the lecturer often feels himself called upon to address and to say something to those among the audience who already know a good deal about his subject, as well as to make things clear to those who are absolute novices.
Some people have made this discussion the opportunity for attacking on the one hand the English language, and on the other the use of special names applied by men of science to special things and special processes. We cannot at once change the English language, even did we wish to do so. But the creation of special names to distinguish things not distinguished from one another in common speech is a necessity. It cannot be avoided. It is mere impatience and temper to call the names and terms which are necessary as counters of thought “jargon.” No doubt there may be in some lecturers and writers a tendency to excessive use of special terms and names, but the real trouble in the matter arises from the too rapid thrusting of a large number of such unfamiliar words upon an untrained audience. If new words are introduced in moderation they can be assimilated. They cannot be dispensed with altogether. A correspondent lately complained to me that I wrote of the minute creature which causes the sleeping sickness as a Trypanosome, whereas, had I called it “a blood-parasite” he would have known what I meant, and been able to follow my statement more easily. I am sorry to say that I cannot agree with him. There are many kinds of blood-parasites; there are the worms known as Filariæ, there are the vegetable microbes known as bacteria and bacilli and spirilla, and there are minute creatures of an animal nature called pyroplasma and trypanosoma (beside some others). These must be distinguished from one another if we are to understand anything about the causation of disease by microbes. It would be mere muddling and confusion to simply call them all by the same name, simply “blood parasite.” That would cause the same sort of confusion as would occur if the Smiths or Browns of our acquaintance had no Christian names by which we can separate each member of the class from the others and assign to him his own special qualities, opinions, and property. What some people call “scientific jargon” is assuredly not a thing to be proud of or to mouth with a sense of superiority. Nevertheless, it is absolutely necessary, and must be introduced gently and considerately to the stranger who can and will, if reasonably handled, appreciate the immeasurable advantage of having distinct words to signify distinct things. That, after all, is an elementary feature in all language. And just as the “jargon” of a game, a sport, or a profession has a fascination for those who use it, and forms a bond of union or special understanding between them, so inevitably does the jargon of a branch of science flourish in the thought and on the lips of those who devote themselves to that branch, and bind them in a sort of freemasonry. We do not expect cricketers or golfers to talk in plain English; why should we expect chemists or naturalists to do so? After all, it is a question of moderation and of gradually increasing the dose. The beginner must not be terrified by an array of outlandish words.