190 CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON. 



brings US to the point raised by Professor Turner, viz, that the search 

 for men is more difficult and more important than the search for facts. 

 I hope that you will not regard this long letter as wide of the 

 point, and in conclusion I desire to express my warm approbation, 

 of the scheme. G. H. Darwin. 



\_Lettcr of Arthur Schuster.^ 



Kent House, Victoria Park, Manchester, 



August 18, igo^. 

 In answer to your request to have my views on the letter addressed 

 to you by Professor Simon Newcomb, I will take his various points 

 in order : 



I. There can be absolutely no doubt on the correctness of Profes- 

 sor Newcomb' s view regarding the piling up of a vast mass of obser- 

 vations, which has been made an object in itself, instead of being a 

 means to an end, and hence a proper discussion has not been able tO' 

 keep up with the accumulation of undigested figures. The efforts 

 of individuals to discuss results have often been hampered by want 

 of assistance or of funds, and in many cases have been doomed to 

 failure owing to the fact that the men trained to ob.serve are very 

 often not particularly well fitted to draw conclusions. It would be 

 easy to find examples of the waste of labor which has resulted from 

 incompetent work in the planning out of the methods of reduction. 



II. Here also I agree with Professor Newcomb, and I would like 

 to add another feature of the present situation which stands in the 

 way of the discussion of great problems on a broad basis — the vast 

 mass of accumulating material has rendered it necessary to have a 

 special journal almost for each special branch of a subject ; thus we 

 have a journal dealing with solar physics, and another with terres- 

 trial magnetism, etc. 



The mathematician and physicist who is probably most capable of 

 dealing with the problems of .solar phy.sics and terrestrial magnetism 

 often never sees these journals. If he does he will get bewildered by 

 the ma.ss of detail which is put before him, and often by technical 

 terms which he does not understand. 



What is required here is some intermediate agent whose business 

 it should be, on the one hand, to place before the man of general 

 science the main results of observations which want discussing, and 

 on the other hand before the observer the main facts and measure- 

 ments which the theoretical student requires for his work. 



