298 ORGANIZED SCIENCE 



sional societies concern themselves only rather secondarily— to the 

 extent of awarding fellowships, appointing committees on accredita- 

 tion, curriculum reform, and so on. Very much as was the Royal 

 Society, the earliest of all scientific organizations to survive to the 

 present day, the modern professional societies are primarily con- 

 cerned with communication, and thus with the continuing mutual 

 education of scientists. These societies arrange meetings, support 

 journals and abstracting services, sponsor monograph series and, 

 through such devices of communication, contri\^e to link scientists 

 all over the world in an immense corporate endeavor. But these de- 

 vices of the professional societies, though essential, no more suffice 

 to make organized science than the devices of company and regi- 

 mental commands suffice to make of an anarchic rabble an army. 

 We conceive an elan or esprit that makes the army, and the soul of 

 organized science inheres in a cultural tradition that inspires and 

 directs all members of the community Nagel describes as follows: 



Viewed in broad perspective, science is an enterprise carried on by a 

 self-governing community of inquirers who conduct themselves in ac- 

 cordance with an unwritten but binding code. Each member of this re- 

 public has the right and the obligation to make the most of his capaci- 

 ties for original and inventive research, to make full use of his powers 

 of imagination and insight, to be independent in his analyses and as- 

 sessments, and to dissent from the views of others if in his judgment 

 the evidence requires him to do so. In return for this, on the other 

 hand, he must submit his own investigations to examination by his 

 scientific peers, and he must be prepared to defend his claims by 

 reasoned argument against all competent critics, even if he should be- 

 lieve himself their superior in knowledge and insight. 



The Invisible College 



The Royal Society of London was formed by a group of "virtuosi" 

 who shared an interest in science and a strong conviction that scien- 

 tific knowledge can best be advanced by experimentation. Chartered 

 in 1662, the Society survived, I think, because of that happy concep- 

 tion of scientific organization reflected in the name by which some 

 of its earliest members referred to their then-informal association: 

 the Invisible College. The essence of a college is not its physical 

 plant, trustees, administration, departmental organization, nor even 



