Good Reading

Nobody ever reads a science textbook for fun. But scientists, as distinct from textbook writers, have sometimes been highly readable writers. Proof of it is available this week in a new collection of the history-making but seldom-read writings of 100 of the world's greatest scientists. It is The Autobiography of Science (Doubleday, Doran; $4), edited by Forest Ray Moulton, secretary of the American Association for the Advance ment of Science, and Justus J. Schifferes. By & large, this anthology bears out its editors' assertion that "good science makes good reading." Three cases in point:

Anton van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723), Dutch shopkeeper, amateur naturalist, microscope maker, the first human being to see microbes:

"In the year 1675 I discovered very small living creatures in rain water, which had stood but few days in a new earthen pot. . . . When these animalcula or living atoms moved, they put forth two little horns, continually moving. . . . These little creatures, if they chanced to light on the least filament or string, or other particles, were entangled therein, extending their body in a long round and endeavoring to disentangle their tail. . . . I have seen several thousands of these poor little creatures, within the space of a grain of gross sand, lie fast clustered together in a few filaments.

"I also discovered a second sort, of an oval figure. . . . Comparing them with a cheese mite, which may be seen to move with the naked eye, I make the proportion of one of these small water creatures to a cheese mite to be like that of a bee to a horse. . . ."

Benjamin Franklin (1706-90). on his invention of bifocal spectacles:

"I . . . had formerly two pair of spectacles, which I shifted occasionally, as in traveling I sometimes read, and often wanted to regard the prospects. Finding this change troublesome ... I had the glasses cut, and half of each associated in the same circle. ... By this means ... I have only to move my eyes up or down, as I want to see distinctly far or near. . . . This I find more particularly convenient since my being in France, the glasses that serve me best at table to see what I eat, not being the best to see the faces of those on the other side of the table who speak to me. ... I understand French better by the help of my spectacles. . . ."

Albert Einstein, whose relativity theory is commonly supposed to be beyond the grasp of plain citizens, wrote a layman's "explanation" in 1916. Excerpt:

"It is not clear what is to be understood [in orthodox physics] by 'position' and 'space.' I stand at the window of a railway carriage which is traveling uniformly, and drop a stone on the embankment, without throwing it. Then, disregarding the influence of the air resistance, I see the stone descend in a straight line. A pedestrian who observes the misdeed from the footpath notices that the stone falls to earth in a parabolic curve. I now ask: Do the 'positions' traversed by the stone lie 'in reality' on a straight line or on a parabola? Moreover, what is meant here by motion 'in space'? .. .

"In the first place, we entirely shun the vague word 'space' . . . and we replace it by 'motion relative to a practically rigid body of reference.' The positions relative to the body of reference (railway carriage or embankment) have already been defined in detail. ... If instead of 'body of reference' we insert 'system of coordinates,' which is a useful idea for mathematical description, we are in a position to say: the stone traverses a straight line relative to a system of coordinates rigidly attached to the carriage, but relative to a system of coordinates rigidly attached to the . . . embankment, it describes a parabola. There is no such thing as an independently existing trajectory but only a trajectory relative to a particular body of reference.

"In order to have a complete description of the motion we must specify how the body alters its position with time, i.e., for every point on the trajectory it must be stated at what time the body is situated there."

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