330 CREATIVE SCIENCE 



This possibility cannot fully soh'e our problem. Columbus is ac- 

 companied by others, but the scientist in his laboratory is not so ac- 

 companied. Very rarely will he report— if he "sees" them at all— obser- 

 vations that (given his presuppositions) he attributes to "faulty 

 technique" or some "series of strange accidents." Editors and referees 

 see only the individual's report of what he saw, and are powerless to 

 determine what may have been overlooked or incorrectly seen. Thus 

 this mechanism of co-operative discovery already presumes individ- 

 ual capacity to solve the central problem of recognition. Another 

 possibility of co-operative discovery is suggested by the activity, in 

 any given field of science, of many observers no two of whom share 

 exactly the same presuppositions. One may then be able to recognize 

 what none of his colleagues can "see." But the most fundamental pre- 

 suppositions are likely to be shared by every investigator in a given 

 field at a given time. For recognition of something out of keeping 

 with these we are thus again thrown back to reliance on individual 

 capacity to balance commitment by detachment. 



What are the roots of individual detachment? The training and 

 fellowship of the Invisible College unquestionably promote capacity 

 for dispassionate observation, but this effect is clearly neither neces- 

 sary nor sufficient. Even given this institutional support, many men 

 have ( like Mendel ) failed to observe quite correctly. And, even lack- 

 ing such support, a few men passionately committed to certain pre- 

 suppositions have discovered in themselves the power to recognize 

 appearances implying the inadequacy of those presuppositions. The 

 paradigm of such a man is of course Kepler, who accepts an appar- 

 ently trivial discrepancy as signifying the inadequacy of the presup- 

 position of circular orbits earlier fully accredited by him as by every- 

 body else. 



Intelligence. Capacity to observe, as genuine, experiences contrary 

 to expectation, is inhibited by the feeling of certainty that denies the 

 possibility of such experience. The lively intelligence that can con- 

 ceive alternatives to widely-held presuppositions will dissipate the 

 unhealthy feeling of certainty, and correspondingly facilitate obser- 

 vation of what might otherwise be overlooked as "impossible." Even 

 when intelligence does not supply alternate views at the outset, by 

 producing them in the hour of need it may allow us to take cogni- 

 zance of appearances otherwise so unwelcome as to risk going "un- 

 seen." Thus Beveridge comments that: 



