EMPIRICAL TOOLS AND EMPIRICISM 155 



have not yet found the "secret of Hfe." But in the ashes of dead plants, 

 in the dark of the laboratory, we have found the ideas that permit us 

 to attain for plants a more vigorous growth, and for ourselves a life 

 of greater abvmdance. 



EMPIRICISM AND THE INTERNAL DYNAMICS OF SCIENCE 



By determining the accessible elements of experience, and the quality 

 of attainable data, empirical tools contribute to the shaping of scien- 

 tific history. A new tool can reveal a whole domain of experience the 

 very existence of which was previously unsuspected. Here the tele- 

 scope and microscope are paradigmatic. Note, however, the far 

 more recent unforeseen discovery of that world of bizarre phenomena 

 taking place at ultra-low temperatures. That science has been the 

 "endless frontier" is due in no small measure to the function of its 

 empirical tools in reconstructing its horizons. 



No scientific Alexander need sigh for new worlds to conquer. Nor 

 need he even await the discovery of new worlds: always there are 

 known lands to which we first gain entry only with the development 

 of new empirical tools. For long the geologist could only hypothesize 

 certain phenomena inside the earth, but with the development of 

 laboratory equipment generating extremely high pressures and tem- 

 peratures many of these processes became observable in detail. The 

 physiologist was aware that electrical phenomena accompanied the 

 function of the brain long before the development of adequate elec- 

 tronic instrumentation finally made these phenomena accessible to 

 study. 



Science may be given a dramatic turn even by tlie quite modest 

 empirical innovation that offers no more than easy entry in practice to 

 a realm of data already accessible in principle. Consider as example 

 the recent development of high-speed computing machinery. What is 

 the magic of the computer? This elaborate machinery can perform 

 no mathematical operation previously unperformable by a human 

 mathematician provided with pad, pencil, and plenty of time. Plenty 

 of time, and that is the point: the computing machine can do in sec- 

 onds what a human computer would need years to accomplish. And 

 from this advance in speed many major lines of theoretical investiga- 

 tion have derived immense impetus. As an instance totally different 

 in character, yet intimately related in effect, consider what progress 

 was opened to genetics when it was fortunate enough to choose as its 



