Scientist

“ The technic of the laboratory instruments appealed to you exactly as does the management of a motor-car or the handling of a shotgun; most young men like to use a machine and to get mechanical results. But as to learning the insatiable love of truth, the precise observation and the inexorable deduction which are essential in the scientist, you probably have not even made a beginning. ”

“ Now, the scientist who has developed special qualities of observation and who “possesses” an order in which to classify external objects will be the man to make scientific discoveries. It will never be he who, without preparation and order, wanders dreaming among plants or beneath the starlit sky. ”

“ The simplicity and precision of the author's experimental methods, his conscientiousness in being sure of one step before he takes the next, and the skill displayed in interpreting and combining his experimental results—all these admirable characteristics have rendered his book instructive and entertaining to those who merely follow from afar the progress of science, while, at the same time, he has furnished a model of precise research and clear exposition to the professed scientist. ”

“ We can easily imagine a scientist whose contributions to the work of the laboratory are of the highest order, who holds chairs and possesses civil dignities and honors of every sort, amiably consenting to show a lady a cellular tissue under the microscope. ”

“ The scientist, in his turn, is addicted to laying down terms and bounds to the immeasurable field of human knowledge in the ages to come. He assures us, for instance, that we shall never know the connection between the body and the soul—for there are scientists who still have souls. ”

“ It is, for example, not the cultivated scientist, not the wise scientist, who urges those huge and exorbitant claims which are sometimes advanced for physical science in these days—for electricity and chemistry and ologies. ”

“ After he completes his formal education, the scientist sets about to investigate the world, for that’s what science is all about. The methods he uses to carry out his investigations depend on his particular field. It is impossible to outline what an individual scientist does because he may do any of a thousand things in any of a thousand ways. ”

“ That so long as the scientist restricts himself to investigations of this sort, he is proceeding along strictly scientific lines and his efforts should be encouraged, but that when he proceeds to discuss the implications of his discoveries and to draw conclusions on the subject of space, time, energy, laws of nature, he is getting beyond his depth, and encroaching on the field of the metaphysician. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The scientist must set in order. Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house. ”

“ We give the name scientist to the type of man who has felt experiment to be a means guiding him to search out the deep truth of life, to lift a veil from its fascinating secrets, and who, in this pursuit, has felt arising within him a love for the mysteries of nature, so passionate as to annihilate the thought of himself. ”

“ The scientist first gathers together the greatest possible array of experiential facts and classifies these facts into sequences—that is to say, he gathers together as many instances as he can find in which one given fact follows directly upon the happening of another given fact. ”

“ But unfortunately for such opinions the fact is constantly forced upon the attention of scientists of every description, that the agent by which they examine matter is more than matter, and that this agent, whatever be its substance, asserts its prerogatives to determine the conceptions which the scientist forms of matter as well as to the methods by which he investigates material properties. ”

“ The scientist is of the same type. He is able to observe things, and to give due value even to their minutest details; hence the differences between the characteristics of things are clearly perceived and classified. The scientist distinguishes objects in accordance with the orderly content of his mind. A seedling, a microbe, an animal or the remains of an animal, are not enigmas to him, though in themselves they may be strange to him. We may say the same of the chemist, the physicist, the geologist, the archæologist. ”

“ He creates all the substances, forces, and methods which the scientist discovers in the creation, and uses them in the same way that the mechanic puts material substances through many processes and employs others fashioned in various forms, to build a house, make a garment, or construct an engine. ”

“ Fundamentally, I just think that we are all scientists. Every human who is successful on the Earth thinks scientifically, evaluates the world around him, decides what to do each and every day based on trial and error, and what we would call traditionally, the scientific method.
Now people ask me all the time, people ask me very often: What is your secret? How do you combine science and entertainment? How do combine a show about science with something that's so fun and interesting? ”

“ Every candid person will confess that there are many branches of knowledge about which he had better be silent. We shall not be so uncharitable as to turn the tables and discuss the impression that classical scholars might make on a scientist or engineer, in speaking of science. ”

“ Even in an age of specialization, the interrelation of the sciences has made it necessary for a scientist to have at least a speaking acquaintance with areas outside his own field. A chemist, for example, may find himself involved in biology; the research interests of a biologist may lead him into physics. ”

“ The general results of these researches, which are believed to be sufficiently definite for general questions, are not only prized by the scientist, but they are of value to the engineer and the builder. ”

“ To the question, for example, about lower organisms showing purpose or social feeling in their activity, the scientist, after most careful experiments, may answer in the negative, and be quite emphatic in his answer too; but almost at once he—or some one for him—will appreciate that mankind, when scrutinized and experimented upon in the same way, under the same instruments and through the same laboratory methods, is similarly deficient ”

“ Your exclusive "scientist"—and such are most of them to-day—may be competent to deal with circles and triangles, with wheels and levers [270] with cells and glands, with germs and bacilli and micro-organisms generally, with magnetos and dynamos, with all the heavenly host if you like, but he has no equipment to deal with man! ”

“ He did much to increase public interest in and knowledge of the development of the science by frequent popular articles in the leading magazines, in addition to more technical books and memoirs intended especially for scientists.
Of living scientists, we can do no more than mention a few. ”

“ But it can grasp the general character of scientific procedure, appreciate its difficulties and dangers, understand the expedients for meeting them, and trace it to its roots in the constitution of the human mind and in the needs of life (§ 35) .
(5) In virtue of its general grasp of the aim and method of the sciences a logic of science can at times offer advice to scientists: it may draw their attention to the general problems which their work involves, but which are apt to be overlooked by specialists, such as the claims of consistency and novelty and the regulation of risks (§ 36) . ”

“ I read now and then in the papers that some eminent scientist has made a great discovery. He reads a paper before some Academy of Science, and there are leading articles on it, and his photograph adorns the magazines. That kind of man is not the danger. He is a bit of the machine, a party to the compact. It is the men who stand outside it that are to be reckoned with, the artists in discovery who will never use their knowledge till they can use it with full effect. ”

“ The Creator has—I say it in all reverence—drawn a myriad red herrings across the track, but the true scientist refuses to be baffled by superficial appearances in detecting the secrets of Nature. The vulgar herd catches at the gross apparent fact, but the man of insight knows that what lies on the surface does lie." ”

“ Scientists animated by the purpose of proving that they are purposeless constitute an interesting subject for study. ”

“ The astronomer, the electrician, the chemist, the mineralogist, the botanist, are constantly called upon to perform manual operations of exceeding delicacy. The progress of all branches of physical science depends upon observation, or on that artificial observation68 which is termed experiment, of one kind or another; and, the farther we advance, the more practical difficulties surround the investigation of the conditions of the problems offered to us; so that mobile and yet steady hands, guided by clear vision, are more and more in request in the workshops of science. ”

“ I have been compelled to use the words ‘science’ and ‘scientific’ because these terms have become firmly adherent to a group of subjects such as Physics, Chemistry, Geology, Botany, etc., and cannot now be detached from them. Unfortunately ‘scientific’ is used in another sense as implying accuracy of experimental method and in deduction from results. So that in calling ourselves scientific men we run the risk of seeming to claim a monopoly of method, as though we pretended to be somehow superior to the trained workers in other branches. ”

“ Anyone conversant with a single branch of Natural Science is aware that experiment, as well as observation, is necessary. Who would expect discoveries in physics, or in chemistry, without laboratories and experiments? Do not botanists investigate the functions of plants by dissection, by microscopic and chemical investigation, and by experiment? ”

“ 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 ”

“ I think that a student during his college course should have [p58] a year’s work in a chemical laboratory or else, if his taste inclines him to botany, geology, or zoölogy, a year’s training of his observing powers in some one of these studies. For he ought to get, while at an impressible age, a superficial knowledge of the methods of scientific men, as a basis for his future reading. We all know that science is moving the world and to keep abreast with the movement is a necessity for every educated man. Happily, there are scientific men who popularize their knowledge. ”

“ Yes, science to-day, at the close of this nineteenth century, in the laboratory is discovering and scientifically demonstrating the great, immutable laws upon which the inspired and illuminated ones of all ages have based all their teachings, those who by ordering their lives according to the higher laws of their being get in a moment of time, through the direct touch of inspiration, what it takes the physical investigator a whole lifetime or a series of investigators a series of lifetimes to discover and demonstrate. ”

“ The chemist, with crucible and retort, with countless experiments, is trying to find the qualities of substances—to ravel what nature has woven.
The great mechanics dwell in the realm of the real. They seek by natural means to conquer and use the forces of nature. They want the truth—the actual facts.
The physicians, the surgeons, rely on observation, experiment and reason. They become acquainted with the human body—with muscle, blood and nerve—with the wonders of the brain. They want nothing but the truth.
And so it is with the students of every science. ”

“ Each science has its own classification of the objects with which it deals, the kinds- of likeness and unlikeness according to which these objects are grouped varying in relation to the special qualities or properties of matter with which the science is concerned. Thus, the physicist classifies bodies according to their mechanical, electrical, thermic, or other physical properties ; the chemist, regards their composition ; while the zoologist and the botanist group them according to their likenesses and unlikenesses of structure, function, and distribution. ”

“ It was thought that the temper of the really scientific man, so patient in research, so accurate and conscientious, so slow to dogmatize, so deferential to others, might be fostered by experimental science in the schools, acquiring "knowledge at first hand," making experiments, looking with great respect at balances, weighing and measuring, and giving an account of results. ”

“ The definitions which those works furnish of the sciences, for the most part either do not fit them—some being too wide, some too narrow—or do not go deep enough into them, but define a science by its accidents, not its essentials; by some one of its properties which may, indeed, serve the purpose of a distinguishing mark, but which is of too little importance to have ever of itself led mankind to give the science a name and rank as a separate object of study. ”

“ 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. ”