32 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 



It has been said that the chemist and the physicist should be diamet- 

 rically opposite in their ways of thinking and working. If so it is very 

 important that the results of each should be put in proper shape to be 

 utilized by the other. The chemist requires aid from the physicist, the 

 physicist from the mathematician, the engineer from all. The historian 

 requires aid from the linguist, and the economist from the historian. 

 Every art and science, and every calling in life, is dependent for its 

 proper development on every other, and should be able to apply the re- 

 sults that have been worked out by specialists in all branches. 



Systematic co-operation is still more requisite between those of the 

 same profession than between those of different professions ; it is in fact 

 another name for civilization. Without co-operation we should soon be 

 reduced to the condition of paleolithic man, and forced to hunt reindeer 

 with clubs, or if we should congregate it would only be to sit on shell 

 mounds and eat oysters. 



It is time to build up Science on broad foundations. We cannot all be 

 specialists hereafter. The results of our labor must be put together in 

 such shape as to be utilized. And to this end new means of communica- 

 tion must be employed. 



In every branch of science a complicated system of technical terms and 

 hieroglyphics has been employed as a screen to keep" off intruders and 

 to hide the precious jewels from the profane glance of those who have 

 not dug them. 



Many of the papers read before our own society are intelligible only 

 to the speakers. The listeners only recognize the language by occasional 

 articles or prepositions. 



In our efforts to scale the heavens and find out its secrets, we have 

 been paralyzed by a confusion of tongues like our ancestors in the valley 

 of the Euphrates four thousand years ago. 



Technical terms and symbols are necessary and proper tools for the 

 specialist to work with, but they are not the fruits of his labor to turn 

 over to the world. 



The technical languawe that acts as a barrier between different sciences 

 is far from being all-sufficient for its own science. The specialist is 

 forced to spend a valuable part of his life in assimilating the work of 

 others before he can hope to advance the bounds of science even in the 

 narrow field in which he is working. This involves a great dissipation of 

 energy. Moreover, many sciences are so buried in their own symbols that 

 the specialists are mystified about the purport of their discoveries. They 

 take abstract formulte to be the end, and not the means, of their work. 



