W. O. BAKER 



orderly, routes toward a specific scientific or technical objective. 

 They would, indeed, be said to be "highly motivated" to that 

 end. But 1 think we will have to leave this operation to our 

 neighbors on Madison Avenue. Most of them over there now 



o 



have research departments, and some day they may find among 

 their "hidden persuaders" ways to marshal research scientists 

 in the fashion we have just discussed. 



The second possibility for resolving the paradox recog- 

 nizes that those having the ablest and most creative minds will 

 prefer to use them in basic research by following up the 

 undirected, uncontrolled, unspecified, unprogrammed, and cer- 

 tainly unknown courses revealed as the work itself goes ahead. 

 These courses naturally multiply as basic research progresses 

 in a particular field. It would be good even to know why a basic 

 scientist takes one of the paths rather than another that seems 

 to branch off from the same point. The remarkable thing is 

 the high consistency with which genius in science seems over 

 and over to take unerringly the right path from among many 

 branches. Sometimes one thinks it is because the genius sees 

 what he can do and avoids those choices of paths which would 

 lead him into areas of tasks presently unfeasible or overwhelm 

 ing. Anyway, it is recognized that this modus vivendi in basic 

 research will not fit easily into some master pattern for acquir- 

 ing; a fast-selling cure for backache or for a weightless, endless 

 electrical power source for a space vehicle. Industry and gov- 

 ernment should give up trying to program things this way. 

 Therefore, we have somehow to present to the gifted researcher 

 situations in which he will feel little or no inhibition of the 

 tree travel of the pathways of his mind. But at the same time 

 there must be easily available to him, as a social as well as an 

 intellectual creature, ways to see and to relate to the conditions 

 described by Bacon. Then, we believe that many devices of 

 modern technical organization can be brought in. These clear 



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