110 SCIENTIST 



the most of the advantages and to minimize the disadvan- 

 tages inherent in the institution he attends. It must always 

 be remembered that our best universities and our best 

 colleges offer much more than even the best student can 

 absorb. 



I will have relatively little to say about the choice of 

 particular courses. All colleges have certain requirements 

 for concentrating or majoring in one field and for broad- 

 ening one's experience through contacts with other sub- 

 jects. A corps of deans and advisers will be at hand to 

 help the student arrive at choices suitable to his needs. 

 The science courses chosen will depend upon how soon 

 one is able to arrive at a decision about a field of spe- 

 cialization within the broad field of science itself. By and 

 large, it is probably wise not to specialize too soon but 

 to continue one's contact with the basic fields of physics, 

 chemistry, and biology at least through sophomore year. 



The first reason for concentrating on basic science be- 

 fore entering one of the specialties is a theoretical one, 

 but none the less important. As we have said before, 

 science is an effort to explain things in terms of other 

 things. It appears to us now that the simplest and at the 

 same time most comprehensive terms of explanation are 

 the terms of physics and chemistry. To put the matter 

 in its baldest terms, the oceanographer, the meteorologist, 

 yes, even the psychologist who doesn't know physics and 

 chemistry, simply doesn't know the language in which 

 his most important statements are going to be made. It 

 can be admitted that there are today numbers of workers 

 in all these fields whose knowledge of physics and chem- 

 istry is pretty rudimentary. By virtue of long experience 

 or natural ingenuity they can identify and define certain 

 gross aspects of their field of study and so lay the ground- 



