^GIC^^ 



CHAPTER XI 



Creative Science 



-E IS a fool who would even 

 attempt verbal description of the subtle skill of scientific research. 

 Koestler lumps together a "high" and a "humble" skill in asserting 

 that: 



To ride a bicycle or play the violin requires great skill and "muscle- 

 knowledge"; but it is a knowledge which cannot be verbalized, and 

 most of the perceptions of minute stimuli during the process, as well 

 as the responses to them, take place on an unconscious level. 



Even when skills involve no "muscle-knowledge" they still escape 

 reduction to verbal formulae. Consider, as one somewhat special 

 case, the path the hypothetical student of pulmonary radiology ( see 

 p. 14) must travel to gain mastery of that skill. Consider, as the 

 most general possible case, what Bartlett adopts as the foundation 

 postulate for his whole study ( and book ) on "Thinking." 



Thinking has its acknowledged experts, like every other known form 

 of skill, and in both cases much of the expertness, though never, per- 

 haps, all of it, has to be acquired by well-informed practice. 



Like the skill of thinking, the skill of scientific research involves an 

 element of art that is not acquired when one has swallowed some 

 encapsulated formula. Rather, that skill must be assimilated from the 

 experience of research. 



The skill that cannot be given the student can be acquired by him; 



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