CHOOSING A RESEARCH PROBLEM 75 



There are still those who maintain that any piece of scientific 

 investigation carefully done and published must of necessity bear 

 great fruit in future years, but such views are usually met with in 

 those who do not seriously attempt to keep up with the progress 

 of the current literature of their science; to him who makes this 

 now practically hopeless attempt it becomes apparent that science 

 advances almost entirely along those lines where interest to a 

 large number is maintained, for we think about and work with 

 what we read, and we are perforce compelled to read only what 

 interests us most in the present voluminous mass of scientific 

 writings. From the practical side, at any rate — and this side 

 usually looms large in one way or another on the horizon of the 

 beginning scientist — it is desirable for both worker and science 

 that a general interest be commanded, as far as possible, by the 

 line of work which the beginner chooses to undertake. 



The suggestions to be embodied in the sequel have come to the 

 writer from time to time during the past decade. They are here 

 brought together in an attempted logical arrangement, partly 

 from a desire to aid beginners in choosing the line of work with 

 which they hope to make their debut as investigators, partly to 

 clarify the writer's own views on the subject (with the hope that 

 he who reads and disagrees may not do so in silence). 



With the consciousness of the overwhelming inadequacy of 

 any presentation such as this, there is a human satisfaction in 

 pointing out that the following paragraphs involve almost nothing 

 that is original, excepting the mode of statement. Doubtless 

 every idea brought out below has been long held by others. It is 

 also almost certain that every point here made is incorrect or 

 inadequate to some degree : if the stating of these ideas may dis- 

 tract attention, for a few moments, from the concrete questions 

 of the laboratory and field, and may arouse a train of thought 

 by which it may be sought out wherein these points are wrong 

 and why they are so, then the future of our knowledge of plant 

 dynamics should surely be the gainer by as much as is lost to the 

 immediate present through such distraction. 



The choice with which we have to deal appears to depend, in 

 general, upon three conditions: The view-points of the older men 



