INSTRUMENTS AND METHODS OF RESEARCH 193 



What is the effect on the general broad-mindedness of man by 

 this extreme specialization^ so necessary for the production of the 

 best and most far-reaching results? 7s the modern specialist more 

 narrow-minded than the generalist of a century or two ago? In 

 view of our opening statement that the prime instrument of research 

 is, after all, the mind, the question is, as you see, not an irrelevant 

 one. We find statements occasionally made which would imply an 

 affirmative answer to our question; but I, for one, would most em- 

 phatically protest against such an inference. I should maintain that 

 the specialist, other things being equal, is likely to be a broader man 

 than he who has no specialty, but simply a general knowledge of 

 some particular science. The reason for my positive statement would 

 be found in the fact mentioned, that the greatest part of the research 

 work to-day is being done on the border-lands of the general sciences; 

 for he who wishes to take part in this very active competition must 

 needs be far better equipped than the mere generalist. The physical 

 chemist, to be most successful, must have a very intimate knowledge 

 of both physics and chemistry, and the more mathematical skill he 

 possesses the b.etter. The astrophysicist must be a physicist, a chemist, 

 a mathematician, besides being an astronomer. And so with regard to 

 the geophysicist. 



Only a few names need be cited — like those, for example, of Fara- 

 day, Maxwell, Kelvin, von Helmholtz, Mascart — to support the con- 

 tention that the broadest physicists are, as a rule, those who have 

 regarded their laboratory experiments and deductions therefrom 

 merely as a means to an end, not an end in themselves, and who 

 have accordingly sought to apply the knowledge gained to the solu- 

 tion of some of the great problems affecting the general welfare of 

 man. There is the greatest need in this country of well-trained and 

 well-equipped physicists in the solution of the many perplexing prob- 

 lems of the earth's physics with regard to the phenomena of seismology, 

 vulcanology, meteorology, geodesy, atmospheric electricity, terrestrial 

 magnetism, etc. When the investigator makes the attempt to apply 

 some of his laboratory facts to geophysical and cosmical phenomena, he 

 has opened to himself a world of which he never dreamed ; he finds zest 

 in familiarizing himself with the fundamental facts of other sciences 

 in which until now he could take no interest. 



Methods of Eesearch; Discovery op Lavs^s 

 The methods in general have already received treatment in con- 

 nection with the foregoing topics. It is always interesting to know 

 what was the precise course followed in the discovery of a great law. 

 However, no two investigators have ever pursued, or at least but rarely, 

 precisely the same paths, and we must therefore be content with the 



