How to Know People By Their Hands - edizione con copertina flessibile

Excerpt from How to Know People by Their Hands

SOME time ago there was an eclipse of the sun. To study this phenomenon, scientific expeditions began to gather their equipment many months in advance. They knew what instruments would be needed, where to go for their observations, and the exact moment when the event would take place. This eclipse was foreseen even before the birth of the scientists taking part in the expeditions.

Was this a case of clairvoyance-penetration of the future by some gifted seer whose word was accepted by modern scientists as sufficient reason to send them voyaging thousands of miles? Not at all. Test tubes and mathematical formula breed men from Missouri who want to be shown. They would certainly not have accepted the word of inspiration on this subject any more than they would have taken a mad Adventist's forecast of the world's end. Yet they, and millions of others, accepted detailed predictions of the exact path the obscuring shadow of the moon would take.

So, in other fields of science, has prediction become a matter of course. Chemists will tell you in advance the reaction to be obtained by combining two substances. Physicists will explain how soon and where a projectile, shot from a certain place, will hit. Engineers will inform you how many revolutions per minute to expect from a wheel as the power applied is increased or decreased.

In less learned circles, everyone is willing to embark on limited predictions about the everyday occurrences of our lives. We take for granted that night will be followed by morning. We assume that when we apply a match to an open gas jet the gas will ignite. We are not surprised when we drop a pencil to see it fall to the ground.

Quite clearly, we translate a repeated occurrence into prediction of its continuance. The scientist does not go that far. His predictions are based on involved calculations making use of past observations. In theory he is not so certain ev