Philosophical Convention

In the 141-year-old red brick building of the American Philosophical Society alongside Independence Hall, Philadelphia, gathered last week scores of U. S. erudites, to celebrate the Society's 203rd birthday, to read some twoscore learned papers. Founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1727, the Society's intent was "to promote useful knowledge.'' Last week's "useful knowledge" ranged from papers on The Geography of American Peppers to the Kinetics of Bioluminescent Reactions of Short Duration. High lights:

George Washington Crile, famed chief of the Cleveland Clinic, told the meeting that memory was an electrochemical process. Sense stimuli, he said, send electrical impulses through the nervous system. Reaching the brain these currents cause metal ions to be deposited in the pathway in some definite arrangement. Later, when the event which caused the initial stimulation is repeated, similar currents are dispatched which reactivate the original pathways, produce memory.

Frederick Simonds Hammett, Philadelphia biochemist who has studied tissue growth for eleven years, decided after experiments on more than a million nuclei of tissue cells that a sulphur compound was directly responsible for tissue growth, that another sulphur compound was responsible for stagnation of tissue growth which comes with old age. His principle is universal, holds in the vegetable as well as in the animal kingdom.

The discovery, result of pure biological research, was put to test in a Philadelphia hospital. It was found that bed sores, ulcers, when treated with a simple sulphur compound, healed quickly. Only a few days, stated Dr. Hammett, were necessary to cure an ulcer on a Philadelphia bootlegger's foot. Brilliant are the possibilities suggested by this theory. Possibly, predicted some, it may solve the most mysterious of life processes.

Abraham Flexner, onetime secretary of the General Education Board, told his listeners, many of whom were college professors, that there was not an educational institution in the country deserving the name of a University. Said he: "They resemble the modern drug store in which the pharmacy has been pushed in the corner by soda fountains and sandwich counters. Academies and learned societies are becoming more numerous in the U. S., but they lack the amenities of the common rooms of the English Universities, or the German beer garden. It has been suggested that the best way to advance learning in the U. S. would be to endow a tea room."

Ernest William Brown, Yale mathematician, told the closing session of the meeting that earth's rotation, upon which man depends for his time measure, is running ahead of schedule. Due to this increased speed the earthly day is a fraction of a second less than 24 hours long.

Noting this, astronomers at first concluded that the moon was off schedule but subsequent checks on other bodies proved earth to be at fault. Gratifying to clock manufacturers was his statement that the slight variation has some method. Earth would, said Dr. Brown, run fast for a number of years, then lag behind. Sudden changes in rotation rate were noted in 1897 and 1917. Causes for such behavior are unknown.

To conclude the meeting a dinner was held at which lists of the Society's members were distributed. Included: George Washington, Thomas Paine, Anthony Wayne, Herbert Hoover.

George Grant MacCurdy, Director of the American School of Prehistoric Research, discussed the idea that 27,000 years ago religious unity prevailed over the earth. The Godhead was a woman, mother of fertility, usually depicted as being in the last stages of pregnancy.

The image carvers of the Middle Stone Age paid little attention to such details as hands and feet but put all stress on body curves. Like images have recently been uncovered on the Bay of Biscay and 7,000 miles away from there in Siberia. Buried with the latter were bones of a mammoth, a wooly rhinoceros. Surprising to scientists was primitive man's ability to disseminate information over so wide an area. Also surprising is the fact that few men-idols are found, indicative of man's secondary place in primitive society.

Later, as man became more agricultural, depended less on the fertility of animals for food, he displaced his mother goddess, began to worship the sun.

John Quincy Stewart of Princeton, to give his listeners some conception of the heat at the sun's centre, constructed an imaginary refrigeration system which would reduce the heat to a point where man could survive. Said he. "If power cost one-thousandth of a cent a kilowatt a century--one billionth of its present cost --the refrigeration bill at the sun's centre would be $50,000,000 a minute." Outside this imaginary temperate spot, perspirers would complain of a heat of 75,000,000DEG Fahrenheit.

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