Scientific paper

“ Most scientific papers are not written to be read for enjoyment. Conciseness as well as clarity are striven for, conveying certain information in a small compass. The correlations made are often obscure ones, appreciated only by scientists. Yet the material they contain is often intensely interesting, and if these papers were written in a more leisurely style, with more general correlations pointed out, they would provide both interesting and entertaining reading. ”

“ The popular idea of scientific investigation is a vehement, aimless collection of little facts, collected as a bower bird collects shells and pebbles, in methodical little rows, and out of this process, in some manner unknown to the popular mind, certain conjuring tricks—the celebrated “wonders of science”—in a sort of accidental way emerge. ”

“ It is almost bewildering to consider that the titles of more than a thousand scientific papers were printed on the preliminary program. They were distributed among the sciences included in the association, as follows: astronomy and mathematics, 37; physics, 54; chemistry, 254; mechanical science and 17; geology and geography, 141; zoology, 124; botany, 122; anthropology and psychology, 63; social and economic science, 17; physiology ”

“ One notes first a wholesome influence in the establishment of higher standards, both of research and of scientific publication. Investigations as a whole have become more intensive and more critical. Much of the work that would have passed muster for publication two decades ago is now regarded by the editors of the best biological periodicals as too general and too superficial. The requisites for the recognition of creditable work being higher, tends to elevate the whole level of biological science. ”

“ The length of time which elapses between the publication of discoveries and their practical fruits is very variable. Usually benefit commences at once and gradually widens; directly discoveries are published they begin to be used by compilers of scientific books, and by teachers and lecturers in science, and are thus diffused amongst the public in general, and begin to produce beneficial effects. ”

“ Between 1806 and 1868 he communicated no less than 315 papers on scientific subjects most of them bearing upon optical investigations to the transactions of societies, and to purely scientific journals. ”

“ I am confronted on the very threshold of my address by the doubt whether it were better to beat out the little bit of golden thought, for which I have time and capacity, into a thin leaf which shall merely gild the whole vast surface of scientific investigation, even for a single year, or to condense it into a solid though minute globule, only big enough and bright enough to light up some narrow specialty. ”

“ It may be a task, not hopeless, to extract from the past progress of science the elements of an effectual and substantial method of Scientific Discovery. The advances which have, during the last three centuries, been made in the physical sciences;—in Astronomy, in Physics, in Chemistry, in Natural History, in Physiology;—these are allowed by all to be real, to be great, to be striking ”

“ The great majority of scientific facts are here published by the proceedings or transactions of scientific societies, or in special journals; and although a scientific man frequently brings together his general results into a volume for the public, the original communications remain as the detailed exposition of his researches. ”

“ In every enlightened country, men illustrious for talent, worth and knowledge, are ardently engaged in enlarging the boundaries of natural science; and the history of their labors and discoveries is communicated to the world chiefly through the medium of scientific journals. The utility of such journals has thus become generally evident; they are the heralds of science; they proclaim its toils and its achievements; they demonstrate its intimate connection as well with the comfort, as with the intellectual and moral improvement of our species ”

“ Finally, we must review, but more briefly, the subsequent history of what has so often been called after its founder, “Silliman’s Journal.”
The nineteenth century, and particularly the hundred years in which we are now interested, must always stand out in the history of the world as the period which has 14combined the greatest development in all departments of science with the most extraordinary industrial progress. It was not until this century that scientific investigation used to their full extent the twin methods of observation and experiment. ”

“ The legitimate aim of all systematic, exact experiments is to lay a foundation of well-ascertained and closely related facts on which may be developed a superstructure of science to supersede the theoretical speculations which form an important part of the prelude of scientific discovery. ”

“ The Proprietors and Publishers of THE AMERICAN CHEMIST, having purchased the subscription list and stock of the American reprint of the CHEMICAL NEWS, have decided to advance the interests of the American Chemical Science by the publication of a Journal which shall be a medium of communication for all practical, thinking, experimenting, and manufacturing scientific men throughout the country. ”

“ The most striking, and also the most radical and pervasive, characteristic of our time is, of course, the progress made in scientific knowledge. Month by month enormous numbers of facts are, in every department, added to the knowledge already acquired. To let one’s imagination range, even in a cursory way, over the work that is being done in 38 chemistry and physics merely as they concern biology—to enumerate the subdivisions of these sciences, or to look down a list of recent publications relating to research carried on in them, is enough to make one’s brain reel. ”

“ We are aware, also, that Journals have been established, professedly deriving their materials principally from foreign sources; that our various literary Magazines and Reviews have given, and continue to give, some notices of physical and mathematical subjects, and that some of them seem even partial to these branches of knowledge: that various limited efforts have been made, and are still making, to publish occasional or periodical papers, devoted to mathematical or physical subjects, and that even our newspapers sometimes contain scientific intelligence. ”

“ Although we cannot always isolate our factors, control our processes, and otherwise apply scientific method, with results as conclusive as those obtained in laboratories of chemistry, physics, or biology, we need not therefore reject scientific method in favor of a rule-of-thumb. ”

“ Therefore, the great business of the scientific teacher is, to imprint the fundamental, irrefragable facts of his science, not only by words upon the mind, but by sensible impressions upon the eye, and ear, and touch of the student, in so complete a manner, that every term used, or law enunciated, should afterwards call up vivid images of the particular structural, or other, facts which furnished the demonstration of the law, or the illustration of the term. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Under this title an illustrated journal will be published weekly, to which the attention of scientific men and the educated public is invited.
Science will be a strictly independent journal, devoted to the advancement of knowledge and scientific research in America, and will be technical only in so far as the subject-matter may require. ”

“ A scientific classification, on the other hand, aims at the utmost comprehensiveness, ransacking the whole world from the depths of the earth to the remotest star for new objects, and scrutinising everything with the aid of crucible and dissecting knife, microscope and spectroscope, to find the qualities and constitution of everything, in order that it may be classed among those things with which it has most in common and distinguished from those other things from which it differs. ”

“ It is a general truth that the physical sciences of light and heat are based upon mechanical conditions of the particles of matter; that the science of chemistry is founded upon physics; that biological phenomena are dependent upon physical and chemical conditions; that psychological subjects are based upon biology; and that biological science cannot progress excepting in proportion to the advance of the sciences on which it is based. ”

“ This is a good illustration of the fact that some way can always be found of making practical, everyday use of complicated scientific data, which appears to be beyond the experience and the range of the technical training of ordinary practical men. ”

“ The Study of the Biological and Physical Sciences.—The last century is marked by scientific development along several {466} rather distinct lines as follows: the study of the earth, or geology; animal and vegetable life, or biology; atomic analysis, or chemistry; biochemistry; physics, especially that part relating to electricity and radioactivity; and more recently it might be stated that investigations are carried on in psychology and sociology, while mathematics and astronomy have made progress. ”

“ But I would like to call attention here to what appears to me a fundamental condition of scientific work and thereby a necessary result of scientific training. Science is naught if not exact. Accurate observation, accurate record, accurate deduction from data, all of which may be reduced to simple, plain honesty. Anything else is error, not science. ”

“ The tests which we are making are given for the advancement of science and for the information of the person tested. By scientific means we will be able to separate characteristics derived from heredity and environment and to treat each class separately. ”

“ Unfortunately, an inferior line of research has become fashionable, and scientific investigators, like all other people, are more or less subject to fashion. It must be plain to every one, however, that the work of chemistry amounts to a good deal more than merely to obtain, formulate, and classify new compounds. ”

“ The scientific results, which most fortunately seem to be justifying the expedition, are being published in suitable places; there is no technical science in this journal. It is a record of some of the human experiences through which a scientist goes in search of facts lying beyond everyday human experience. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Of the thousands of scientific journals and regular publications by scientific societies and academies to-day, but a very small number have carried on a continuous and practically unbroken existence since 1818. ”

“ Hence, while Chemistry and Biology, even apart from the possibility of their conversion into branches of applied Mechanics, are essentially descriptive sciences, the task fulfilled by them, so far as they use qualitative and teleological categories, is one of æsthetic and historical rather than of properly scientific description. ”

“ It is characteristic of the progress of research that as one proceeds the horizon broadens and new questions spring up in the pathway of the investigator. He does not solve the problems he sets out to solve, but opens a lot of new ones. This is one of the features of scientific research that make its votaries characteristically optimistic.
Experimental Work.—Among the recent influences tending to advance biology, none is more important than the application of experiments to biological studies. ”

“ Other scientific enterprises with which the Institution is allied are noticed; and the report-volume itself embodies the results of a considerable amount of research in meteorology and allied subjects, astronomy, physics, chemistry, botany, zoology, and anthropology, with numerous special papers in the last-mentioned subject. ”

“ Moreover, peer review involves scientists submitting a manuscript to a scientific journal in the field, journal editors soliciting critical reviews from other experts in the field and deciding whether [*745] the scientist has followed proper research procedures, employed up-to-date methods, considered and cited relevant literature and generally, whether the researcher has employed sound science. ”

“ The Serial columns of Nature contain the gist of the most important Papers that appear in the numerous Scientific Journals which are now published at home and abroad, in various languages; while longer Abstracts are given of the more valuable Papers which appear in foreign Journals. ”

“ By carrying out practical field experiments, in combination with scientific work in the laboratory, he was able to put to the test matters of agricultural practice and to study their scientific import. ”

“ The results of these investigations, if we were wise, would have been recorded in the simplest and tersest language possible, for such is the language of Science. It is needless to point out that in these records of our studies, as in the records of all scientific studies, too many facts could not possibly be registered. Every little fact is welcome in scientific study, so long as it is true. And thus the humblest scientific worker may help in the great work; his mite is always acceptable. ”

“ It is not enough merely to present plausible generalizations; scientific conclusions are followed swiftly either by proof or disproof. With this check always in mind, the scientist feels the necessity for the most rigid verification of his data, methods, and principles. ”