Researcher

“ That every specialist in research will derive both pleasure and profit by withdrawing his attempts for a brief period from his own province and listening to what his fellow investigators in widely different specialties have to say in regard to the problems and relations of their several fields of study is too obvious to need enforcement. But we should err in confining the benefits thus arising to actual suggestions. We must recognize the historic fact that modern science really began, not with investigations, but with the ideas which were necessary to the beginnings of investigation. ”

“ To anyone who knows the business of investigation practically, Bacon's notion of establishing a company of investigators to work for 'fruits,' as if the pursuit of knowledge were a kind of mining operation and only required well-directed picks and shovels, seems very strange. [C] In science, as in art, and, as I believe, in every other sphere of human activity, there may be wisdom in a multitude of counsellors, but it is only in one or two of them. And, in scientific inquiry, at any rate, it is to that one or two that we must look for light and guidance. ”

“ For example a scientific investigator, lit and inspired by great inquiries, may be hampered by the conditions of his professorship or research fellowship, which exact an appearance of “practical” results. Or he may be obliged to lecture or conduct classes. He may be able to give but half his possible gift to the work of his real aptitude, and that at a sacrifice of money and reputation among short-sighted but influential contemporaries. Well, if he is by nature an investigator he will know that the research is what God needs of him. ”

“ I should say that the most prominent scientific men of our country, and perhaps of this age, are either serving the arts and not pure science, or are performing faithful but quite subordinate labors in particular departments. They make no steady and systematic approaches to the central fact. A discovery is made, and at once the attention of all observers is distracted to that, and it draws many analogous discoveries in its train; as if their work were not already laid out for them, but they had been lying on their oars. ”

“ THE investigator in any field of knowledge must, as the price of success, both comprehend the general principles underlying his special problem, and give constant care to its details. Yet it is well, now and then, to leave details behind and consider the bearing of his work upon the science as a whole. ”

“ For have they not found fitting employment for the energies of many, who in their own departments stand in the foremost rank of scientific investigators? The scientific discoverer must ever lead the way. Applied science, coming after, takes up the thread of discovery, and once guided into a useful channel industries are created and commerce spreads. ”

“ It is in the intermediate period that the opportunity is offered of extended research into the records of science, of confirming or correcting the results of reading and study by observation, of making original investigations into the worlds of matter and of thought, and thus bringing forth to the light truths which may benefit mankind, and at the same time serve as the basis of honor and success to their discoverer. ”

“ Created for purposes of teaching and administration, they are a veritable bane to the investigator who can not stop mining because his vein happens to dip into another man's superficial territory. Even in the routine of teaching many changes are likely to come. I believe there will be developments in two main directions. The present laboratory studies, or propædeutics, will be deepened and extended in the direction of the more exact sciences, or toward the physical, chemical and biological work of the university proper. ”

“ Those who possess the genuine spirit of scientific investigation, and who have tasted the pure satisfaction arising from an advancement in intellectual acquirements, are content to proceed in their researches without inquiring at every step what they gain by their newly-discovered lights, and to what practical purposes they are applicable; they receive a sufficient gratification from the enlargement of their views of the constitution of the universe, and experience in the immediate pursuit of knowledge that pleasure which others wish to obtain more circuitously by its means. ”

“ It is the rule of the laboratory that everyone who carries on a special research has to be a subject in several other investigations. The reporting experimenters take the responsibility for the theoretical views which they express. While I have proposed the subjects and methods for all the investigations, and while I can take the responsibility for the experiments which were carried on under my daily supervision, I have left fullest freedom to the authors in the expression of their views. ”

“ But the investigator who turns from his modern text-books to the antiquated dissertations of the great thinkers of the past, gains from the history of his own craft a truer view of the relation of theory to fact, learns from the course of growth in each current hypothesis to appreciate its raison d’être and full significance, and even finds that a return to older starting-points may enable him to find new paths, where the modern track seems stopped by impassable barriers. ”

“ In conclusion, let me say a word to those of you here present who are to be the first workers with me in this laboratory. It behooves you as well as me to recognize what a heavy responsibility lies upon us. Upon the work that we do and the spirit in which we do it, upon the character we give our laboratory at its start, much of its future success or failure depends. If we all work honestly and thoroughly, it will win esteem and reputation; if we are careless and half-hearted, it will become of low repute. ”

“ Both these books, as channels by which the experimental labours of each investigator reached the prepared and instructed public, exercised at once, and have continued ever since to exercise, an enormous effect on thought as well as on knowledge. They transformed the methods by which man approaches scientific investigation, and while they instructed they stimulated a new ardour for instruction. ”

“ He knows, also, that this cause is beneficent, and that it plays a great part in the directing of human activities, whether because his science already has practical applications, or because the knowledge of nature is in itself an elevating and enlarging influence for mankind. The scientific investigator knows also that, while his individual experience is the source to which he personally looks for new observations of facts, his private observations contribute to science only in so far as other investigators can verify his results. ”

“ Whence is the scientific investigator to get courage and perseverance for his work, if the laws of nature, according to the prospect which you open, are approaching a point where they shall be done away with? ”

“ In order that science may flourish in any community, several things are needful. There must be a general appreciation of its true value to the world, a clear understanding by men of culture as to the best means for its promotion, facilities for both study and research, and suitable inducements to attract intellectual labor. No matter how able and enthusiastic an investigator may be, he can do little without apparatus or specimens, encouragement, and the means of support. ”

“ The scientist should first of all be an investigator. He should not be content to appropriate to himself the knowledge of others, he should also make his own additions to knowledge. He is also commonly a teacher, by word of mouth, as at the university, or by his writing, in his literary activity. Research, as such, imparts directly a certain knowledge only to the investigator ”

“ Encouragement of Scientific Research.—I wish to speak just a word in appreciation of the men who extend the boundaries of knowledge, and a word in favor of the encouragement of pure research. The investigators are necessarily somewhat removed from their fellows and, therefore, often misunderstood. ”

“ Let any specialist, who has just obtained some notable result, be asked to name half a dozen experts in his own subject to whose opinion he would be willing to submit his discovery, and it will be found that he will with difficulty name half as many, and those not specially eminent in that subject. ”

“ RESEARCH is now an accepted aspect of all phases of human life and activity. Research is a recognized occupation. Research teams solve problems, map the paths of enterprise. We are learning first to think, then, only after careful study, decide on courses of action and follow them through.
6. The field of inquiry and research covered the entire range of human experience. Information, resulting from research, provided the subject matter of new sciences. In the new fields new skills were developed and new professions built up. ”

“ The work of the company has, from the beginning, been under the wise direction of a scientific head, himself an original investigator, and having an ample acquaintance with all the truths which have been evolved by modern scientific research. ”

“ A small number among you may, perhaps, be so circumstanced as to be able to devote yourselves entirely to original scientific research, selecting such branches of inquiry as may have specially interested you here, and giving up your whole time and energy to investigation. A much larger number will, no doubt, enter professions where a scientific training can be turned to practical account, and you may become engineers, chemists, or medical men. ”

“ For the most industrious specialist the field of his own specialty thus abounds in truths that he regards as already known, and that, since his science has once for all ascertained them, he is personally not called upon, unless incidentally, to reëstablish by private research. ”

“ It is the aim of the authors of these essays to present the results of experience in scientific investigation, to illustrate by concrete examples the sources of progress in a few departments of knowledge and so make clear to the layman the position of research as a factor in national prosperity. ”

“ That we make it a part of our work to obtain for these investigators the means of research and the material aid which are necessitated by the rapid and ever-accelerating advances of knowledge for which we are indebted to them; to secure the endowment of new schools of science, the more complete organization of older schools, and liberal provision of apparatus and material for every investigator. ”

“ The scientist thus discovers new truths, {468} establishes the relation of one truth to another, enlarges the boundary of knowledge, extends the horizon of the unknown, and leaves the mystery of the beginning of life unsolved. His laboratory is always open to retest and clarify his work and to add new knowledge as fast as it is acquired. ”

“ What is of importance to him in all these matters with which the professions and technologists are busy is their bearing on those matters of fact into which his scientific interest leads him to inquire. ”

“ We maintain, on the contrary, that the prime requisite in the director of a good experiment station is thorough scientific training. It is not necessary that he possess the highest degree of talent for original research, but a training in the scientific methods of working and thinking is absolutely indispensable to lasting success. ”

“ We have chosen you to assist us in an important research project, because our investigation has found you to be a science fiction enthusiast. We believe you have a better chance of comprehending the scope of our research than would most people of your time. ”

“ A considerable amount of reading in the literature will be expected for the systematic and exhaustive collection of evidence in a definite field. Reports of the results of work upon special problems and of reading for the collection of materials will be presented from time to time at meetings of the Seminar." So to produce scholarly workers in the various fields of learning is the function of the University—to train specialists, to make critics in the higher sense, to furnish investigators who will enter fresh fields and give the world the fruits of their researches. ”

“ In the meanwhile, there is one step in the direction of the endowment of research which is free from such objections. It is possible to place the scientific enquirer in a position in which he shall have ample leisure and opportunity for original work, and yet shall give a fair and tangible equivalent for those privileges. ”

“ Is there not too much emphasis laid by many professors in charge of research students on the mere accumulation of observational, statistical, or experimental facts, with too little attention to that side of science which concerns itself with those analytical and synthetic processes that convert facts into valuable ideas? ”

“ This characteristic of modern experiments—that they consist principally of measurements,—is so prominent, that the opinion seems to have got abroad, that in a few years all the great physical constants will have been approximately estimated, and that the only occupation which will then be left to men of science will be to carry on these measurements to another place of decimals.
If this is really the state of things to which we are approaching, our Laboratory may perhaps become celebrated as a place of conscientious labour and consummate skill, but it will be out of place in the University, and ought rather to be classed with the other great workshops of our country, where equal ability is directed to more useful ends. ”

“ There are very many, not only among educated people who take an interest in science, but even among specialists, who will welcome a work of reasonable compass and handy form containing a trustworthy treatment of the various departments of Natural History by men who are familiar with, and competent to deal with, the latest results of scientific research. ”