302 ORGANIZED SCIENCE 



The consensus prevailing in modern science is certainly remark- 

 able. Consider the fact that each scientist follows his own personal 

 judgment for believing any particular claim of science and each is 

 responsible for finding a problem and pursuing it in his own way; and 

 that each again verifies and propounds his own results according to 

 his personal judgment. Consider moreover that discovery is constantly 

 at work, profoundly remoulding science in each generation. And yet 

 in spite of such extreme individualism acting in so many widely dis- 

 parate branches, and in spite of the general flux in which they are all 

 involved, we see scientists continuing to agree on most points of 

 science. Even though controversy never ceases among them, there is 

 hardly a -question on which they do not agree after a few years' 

 discussion. 



Often, of course, a dispute can be brought to focus and promptly 

 resolved by some crucial test. But, as we saw in the preceding chap- 

 ter, such a test can resolve one issue only because all the disputants 

 already agree on everything else involved in making the test. This 

 same factor remains active even when no crucial test can be devised. 

 The area of disagreement is shrunken, ultimately wiped out, by a "sur- 

 face tension" forcing closure within the vast area of agreement by 

 which disagreement is encompassed. The successes of communal 

 administration are thus only the flower of a communal consensus 

 that, I suppose, must spring from the cultural root indicated by Snow 

 when he writes of scientists as follows : 



. . . the scientific culture really is a culture, not only in an intellec- 

 tual but also in an anthropologic sense. . . . there are common atti- 

 tudes, common standards and patterns of behavior, common ap- 

 proaches and assumptions. This goes surprisingly wide and deep. . . . 



... In their working, and in much of their emotional life, their 

 attitudes are closer to other scientists than to non-scientists who in 

 religion or politics or class have the same labels as themselves. . . . 



. . . Without thinking about it, they respond alike. That is what a 

 culture means. 



THE NORMATIVE FUNCTIONS 



In the Invisible College laws must seem out of place. But even in 

 ordinary colleges the dean only rarely (and generally ill-advisedly) 

 feels impelled to act as a police oflRcer. The eflFecti\'e function of a 

 faculty is ordinarily secured simply by the action on its members of 



