100 YEARS AGO

It is not surprising to find that at last a ‘motor’ pocket book has appeared; in fact, it is a wonder such a work has not appeared sooner... Our author has a breezy style of expression which adds largely to the pleasure of reading the book. Take, for instance, his treatment of that all-important worry of the motorist, the ‘police’. Mr O'Gorman says, “to pass unchallenged at a speed in excess of the legal limit — a thing which is daily accomplished by carts, hansoms, and even by the London omnibuses on almost every run when the gradients favour them... remember that by sitting upright with a calm face (on a quiet car) you produce no impression of speed except on turning a corner. If you turn a corner without being able to see down the road you are entering at over 20 miles per hour you deserve to be punished. If, however, you stoop forward... jamb your hat over your eyes, screw up your face, stare intently and anxiously, do a great deal of steering with visible swinging of your body, blow your horn in such a manner as to say ‘Get out of my way’ frequently, instead of pressing it slowly and peaceably, you will invariably be arrested.”

From Nature 24 March 1904.

50 YEARS AGO

Another statement claimed by Prof. Dingle to be fallacious is connected with an underlying assumption in experimental science; this assumption is that the repetition of an experiment will reproduce the original results. But experimental science is not based on an assumption; “it is an adventure in which you accept whatever you find, and although you may be guided in a particular case by an expectation, the experiment may reveal something totally different”. An instance of this is found in the case of Schwabe, who counted sunspots with the object of finding an intra-Mercurial planet, and instead of doing so he found the eleven-year solar period... it would be futile to believe that the achievements of experimental science would necessarily lose all significance if it were discovered that some assumption proved baseless. In the realm of psychology it is accepted that no experiment when repeated produces the original result, and even in physics it has been held for a long time that no experiment is repeatable, the entropy of the universe never being twice the same.

From Nature 27 March 1954.