Mathematical philosophy, a study of fate and freedom; lectures for educated laymen, by Cassius J. Keyser.

844 MATHEMATICAL PHILOSOPHY
important, it is indeed strange that scientific men have
been so little actuated by Gergonne's beautiful dream.
What has been the trouble? What is the secret? Is it
that scientific specialists find in the educated public a lack
of scientific interest? Tokens of scientific curiosity
abound on every hand,-witness, for example, the recent
world-wide curiosity manifested by non-specialists in the
theories,-most recondite theories,-of Professor Ein.
stein. No doubt such curiosity is often shallow and
transitory, but it can be nourished and be thereby made
deeper and more enduring. Do scientific specialists
really believe that, in general, educated non-specialists
have not enough mind to understand scientific ideas, even
when these are presented in non-technical speech? If they
do, I am convinced that they are mistaken; and if they
do, they must be convinced, if they have considered the
matter, that Democracy is a futile enterprise. The same
conclusion would evidently follow if they held that, for
the most part, scientific ideas do not admit of intelligible
expression in non-technical terms. But they cannot
rationally hold that such expression is in fact impossible;
they may rightly regard it as difficult, as demanding the
patience and skill and humane motivity of a special art,
but they must know that it is not impossible; for they
know that scientific ideas, however high they be above
the level of common experience and common sense, yet
have their roots in its homely soil. Was it Lord Kelvin
or another sage who said of mathematics that it is just
"common sense etherealized"? The statement is as true
of science in general as it is of mathematics; it is not indeed a complete characterization of either of them, for
the process by which they rise out of common sense involves something more than etherealization, something