INSTRUMENTATION by Ralph H. Müller
It's fundamental, but is it new?
\ Λ 7 Ε BELIEVE we have discovered a new
* * type of chain reaction. I t is al most as leisurely as chain reactions in solution for which, quite happily, we know how to choose inhibitors, but not as violent or terrifying as nuclear chain reactions. We refer to the mushroom growth of new analytical journals. Some of these are quite impressive, with editors in all continents and with associate editors and correspondents totaling only a little less than the sub scriber list. We have turned to our Monroe calculator and computed such annoying things as editorial pages per unit subscription price, circulation, and scientific content of importance. The more enlightened of these journals are relatively free of such vulgarities as ad vertising and other echoes of the mar ket place. When we try to calculate who pays for all of this and conclude that we are rapidly approaching a state of maximum literary entropy, we de cide that, all advice to progressive children notwithstanding, Santa Claus still lives! These things are of no con cern to the author; his university or research institution pays the freight. We have had this phenomenon ex plained to us with great patience and forbearance. First of all, the newer journals print only fundamental con tributions. Secondly, they have abol ished carping reviewers and this alone is a boon to a scientist who has attained sufficient renown to make him quite incapable of a misstatement, an error in calculation, or an awkward description of the obvious. In our bewilderment and stubborn ness we keep asking ourselves the same old question: "It may be fundamental —but is it new?" We happen to spend
most of our spare time trying to keep up with the world's literature and very often when we are standing at the jour nal rack someone will ask, "What's new?" Suppressing a yawn, we return the journal to the rack muttering, "Not a thing." Then suddenly we note, with embarrassment, that the question con cerned our problems or our present state of health. "It may be fundamental—but is it new?" seems to be the more important question. To redetermine the activity coefficient of cadmium chloride from 0.005 to 0.01M (molar) and between 283° and 293° K. is certainly funda mental but it will not shock the scien tific world into the realization of a new era. It used to give physical chemists great glee to speak of their organic colleagues by saying, "Today three hundred new organic compounds were born and their epitaphs can be read in Beilstein." Today, organic chemistry is so vital, progressive, and has shat tered so many barriers that, by com parison, much of physical chemistry is moribund and reminiscent of past glories. We find it increasingly difficult to dissociate the term "fundamental" from the element of time. Certainly noth ing is more fundamental than the phe nomenon of gravity, nor quite as an cient. I t is one of the first effects noted by an infant and it has been a superb achievement for man to fly despite it. None of which tells us anything more fundamental about gravity and, call it as fundamental as you wish, it's still old stuff. Until his dying day, Ein stein mourned the fact that he could not successfully incorporate it into a unified field theory or tell much more
about it than we already knew. The trouble with gravity \
