Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 September 1874 — Popular Fallacies. [ARTICLE]

Popular Fallacies.

The age of war and conflict is fast passing away, and the industrial and commercial age is taking itsf place Pmarons is tlie world’s watchword to-day audit is the boast of the nineteenth century that, since its birth, the march of discovery and invention, in all the sciences and arts most conducive to man’s comfort and civilization, has been greater than any preceding half-thousand years. Science is now the measure of a nation's standing: for general scientific knowledge means education, which means refinement and religion, which means death to superstition. And in this country especially, where education and true religion are so generally difiused, science seems to have a stronghold upon - the respect and admiration of all but the most ignorant and backward minds. In view then of Ibis general diffusion of scientific knowledge, which, in this country, though not in itself astonishing, is "yet great when compared with that in most other lands, it does seem remarkable oft-times that so many old and long-exploded fallacies should still find credence among the majority of the people, and even among the well educated. It is feirly astonishing to see what out-rageously-absurd stones will circulate through the popular press, often published in the fullest good faith, and accepted as true by simple-minded readers. The scientific hoaxes perpetrated in the United States are almost innumerable; and that they continue to be published, republished, revamped, and, strangest of all, believed, and solemnly discussed in journals that ought to know better, does not speak well for the thoroughness of this scientific knowledge, on which diffusion we so often pride ourselves. We remember a recent example in the story, lately published in a California paper (these li*oaxes generally emanate from the fertile West), concerning a magnetic cave, said to have been just discovered, possessing such powerful attraction that hatchets w r ere drawn from the hands of the explorers and flew to the roof, remaining glued there; while unfortunates in hobnailed shoes had to leave their foot incasements behind them. This story, though laughed at by one-half the community, was received with open eyes and gaping mouths by the other half, who could not comprehend that the size of the attracted body might have something to do with the force of attraction. But it is not merely of these ingenioushoaxes that we wish to speak, but of a far more injurious state of ignorance among the common people. We refer to pojiular fallacies concerning the sciences of every-day life, and to the general ignorance about the great forces of nature, and the first principles of science in all its departments. Some of these fallacies are simply ludicrous; others are worse. What absurd blunders are made in matters of hygiene ! The prosperity of quack doctors who have medicines, each one of which will cure all the ills that man is heir to, „is a forcible example of the latter case. “By looking into a looking-glass inclined at fortydive degrees, Mr. , of Northampton, obtained last night a fine view of Jupiter’s satellites,” says a certain Springfield paper. How Prof. Snell, of Amherst, must have chuckled to read it! Mr. ’s wonderful glass would have conferred satellites upon every star in heaven. He should have known that plain looking-glass has .no telescopic power, and that his “satellites” were only repeated reflections, between the quicksilver and the front surface of the glass, of the planet he was gazing at. “Mrs. was recently saved from death by a lightning stroke by her son, who dashed a pailful of cold water upon her. It is supposed that the water carried off the electricity remaining in her body, and saved her!” Such is the Boston JimrnqV* lucid-explanation of a simple cure. The poor lady, almost, killed by the terrible stroke, was saved by the sudden nervous shock caused by the cold water which her son with such presence of mind threw at her. It is not the presence of electricity in k human body that endangers, nor even the discharge of that electricity, since the body can hold but a small amount; it is the passage through the body of an immense discharge, between clouds and earth, that kills and destroys. !_ . Old maids, and young ones, too, throw themselves upon a feather bed for protection from “ thunder,” or descend to the cellar. An iron bedstead would be safer than either of these places, because it would keep the charge away from them by receiving it through itself. Timid

ladies are terrified when a boiler discharges steatn through a safety-valve, f6r fear it will burst; when the roar of escaping steam is proof positive that it will not burst. And to Crown all, some misguided victims of an insane fever, forgetful that “ action and reaction are qtial,” and that “ gain in power is loss in time, when the force is given,” still labor and strive to create force out of nothing, and make what science has, time and again, declared impossible, a perpetual motion. = “ rr \ Such absurdities, of course, will never cease until ignorance ceases. But they are altogether too common among those tL«t should Know better, and reveal a great lack ol logical reasoning and definite knowledge. Superficiality is perhaps the great fault’of our common education, especially in science; where exactness is essential. The natural and exact sciences .are, we are happy to say, taking more nearly their deserved stand in our American educational courses; and we hope the time may come, and come soon, when such nonsense as we have discussed cannot possibly be found, much less believed in, among those who have been fairly educated.—A. H., in Scientific American.