THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE 



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THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE 



BESEAECH INSTITUTIONS 



Research institutions are themselves 

 scientific experiments on a large scale, 

 for it is an open question whether re- 

 search work can be supported to great- 

 est advantage under our universities, by 

 separately endowed institutions or di- 

 rectly by the government. While the 

 answer to this question is important, 

 we can safely assume that scientific and 

 scholarly investigations should be car- 

 ried forward by all possible agencies, 

 for the returns on the average and in 

 most cases are many fold the cost, both 

 in economic applications and in their 

 contribution to ideal ends. It seems un- 

 desirable to urge, as Dean Burgess of 

 Columbia University has done recently, 

 that the establishment of research insti- 

 tutions is unwise and unfair to the uni- 

 versities, or, as is frequently asserted, 

 that the scientific work under the gov- 

 ernment and in the experiment stations 

 should be confined to the applications 

 of science. 



President Woodward, of the Carnegie 

 Institution, is certainly correct when he 

 writes in his last annual report: " The 

 common notion that research demands 

 only a portion of one 's leisure from 

 more absorbing duties tends to turn the 

 course of evolution backwards and to 

 land us in the amateurism and the dilet- 

 tanteism wherein science finds its begin- 

 nings. " We can not depend, as in the 

 past England has in large measure, on 

 amateurs of independent means to carry 

 on scientific research. Work such as 

 Charles Darwin did at Down and Lord 

 Rayleigh still does at Sterling Place is 

 not attempted in this country. Among 

 our thousand leading scientific men only 

 eleven may be classed as amateurs, and 

 they are not those of the highest distinc- 

 tion. Practically all our scientific men 

 are employed by the universities, in the 



government service, or by the newly 

 established research institutions. 



In the universities the professors are 

 too much occupied with elementary 

 teaching and enmeshed in the machin- 

 ery of administration. In the govern- 

 ment service the experts are too much 

 limited to the application of science 

 and subject to official routine and red- 

 tape. In both cases the salaries paid 

 are smaller than in business concerns, 

 and probably less initiative and freedom 

 are allowed. The scientific man has a 

 more desirable intellectual life; it is 

 truly unfortunate that this should be 

 counterbalanced by irksome restriction. 



The research institutions have a great 

 opportunity, and the two to which Mr. 

 Rockefeller and Mr. Carnegie have given 

 their money and their names represent 

 a new era in the development of science. 

 Both the Carnegie Institution of Wash- 

 ington and the Rockefeller Institute for 

 Medical Research have begun well. 

 They can draw their members from uni- 

 versity chairs and government bureaus, 

 whereas the reverse movement has not 

 appeared. But it is easier to begin well 

 than to continue in good works. The 

 Johns Hopkins University and the Uni- 

 versity of Chicago began with new 

 ideals of research and of the professor- 

 ship, but they have relapsed to nearly 

 the common level. The United States 

 Geological Survey began with a fine 

 spirit, but it can not be said that the 

 value of its work has increased with the 

 multiplication of its appropriation. 



If the research institutions are to do 

 for this country in the twentieth century 

 what the universities accomplished for 

 Germany in the nineteenth century, they 

 must not become bureaucratic machines 

 but must be controlled by their scientific 

 men. They must also be fertile in teach- 

 ing, no less than in research, as they 



