62 Introduction 



and meditation of a historian will appeal more strongly than research in a 

 laboratory. It is highly probable that laboratory work will be organ- 

 ized more and more on a group basis and such work will not be agree- 

 able to some individuals or will be made disagreeable by rude officers. 

 Thus, some individuals will lose interest in laboratories without there- 

 fore losing interest in science or their knowledge of it. The more time 

 they will have spent in the laboratory before abandoning it the better 

 it will be for their teaching. Dislike of laboratory work may bring back 

 scientists to the humanities but is not a quality in itself. Those deserters 

 will not be welcome in our camp unless they meet other requirements. 

 Two fundamental ones, historical interest and philosophical interest, 

 are really qualities with which a man is born and which grow with him. 

 If a man have them, they will take care of themselves; if he lacks them, 

 he is out. 



A sufficient linguistic ability, let us say, the ability to read Latin and 

 the outstanding languages of today is also a gift, yet it may be acquired, 

 and can be greatly increased. The main difficulty is the lack or the 

 weakness of Latin. We are beginning to suffer for our neglect of Latin 

 in high schools and in colleges. Short-sighted administrators or edu- 

 cators who are driving Latin out do not realize that they are burning 

 behind us the ships that brought us where we are. 



The teacher of the history of science in the larger universities must 

 be prepared to face a paradoxical situation. As his students are re- 

 cruited from every department, the largest common denominator of 

 scientific knowledge is necessarily low, and he must avoid technicalities; 

 on the other hand, some of the students may be taking very advanced 

 scientific courses and will prick their ears whenever he approaches their 

 own field. He must be prepared to meet their questions and will not 

 retain their confidence unless he can answer most of them. If he be 

 well prepared those advanced students will stimulate him and actually 

 help him to give better lectures and to write better books. The cooper- 

 ation thus obtained is of the highest value but he must deserve it. 



The following anecdote will illustrate the point which has just been 

 made. When I am lecturing on Euclid, I seldom fail to quote his very 

 ingenious proof of the theorem that there are an infinite number of prime 

 numbers. As I like to connect ancient knowledge with the new, even 

 with the very newest (the past explains the present and vice versa), I 

 could not resist the temptation in one of my Euclidean lectures to refer 

 to prime pairs not mentioned by Euclid ( i.e., prime numbers of the form 

 2n+l, 2n-|-3 like 11 and 13, 17 and 19, 41 and 43 ) . Like the primes 

 themselves, the prime pairs have the peculiarity of becoming rarer and 

 rarer as one passes from smaller numbers to larger ones; the prime pairs 

 become exceedingly rare indeed. In spite of that, we have the feeling 

 that there are an infinite number of them. I proceeded to say that this 

 proposition had remained imcertain until recently when Dr. Charles 

 N. Moore, professor at the University of Cincinnati, had presented an 



