332 CREATIVE SCIENCE 



weights of all elements are conformable with it. In tliose early days 

 of chemistry, procedures for the determination of atomic weights 

 were still quite crude. Consequently, when Thomson's experiments 

 yielded results incompatible with his hypothesis, he could easily 

 find invalidating errors— some real, some imaginary. Making "ap- 

 propriate" allowance for these, he then obtained "satisfactory" re- 

 sults, and sought no further for errors still present in abundance in 

 his experiments. So proceeding, he simply contrived to find what he 

 had expected to find: his experiments taught him nothing, nor was 

 the hypothesis he espoused in any way strengthened. Berzelius' ap- 

 praisal of this work is harsh but not unjust. 



This investigation belongs to that very small class from which 

 science can derive no advantage whatever; . . . and the greatest 

 consideration which contemporaries can show to the author is to treat 

 his book as if it had never appeared. 



Compare with Thomson's the behavior of one we deem an em- 

 inently successful parent of scientific brainchildren. Nobody could 

 have shown a more passionate commitment to his ideas than Louis 

 Pasteur. Yet his experiments are soundly observed, are great mines 

 of new knowledge. Out of the depth of his commitment to ideas 

 which he felt must survive all tests, Pasteur gathered the detach- 

 ment required to put those ideas to the most searching tests he could 

 devise. He thus lived in fact by the advice he offered others. 



It is indeed a hard task, when you believe you have found an impor- 

 tant scientific fact and are feverishly anxious to publish it, to constrain 

 yourself for days, weeks, years sometimes; to fight with yourself, to tiy 

 and ruin your own experiments and only to proclaim your discovery 

 after having exhausted all contrary hypotheses. 



A brainchild so tried may be deemed competent to make its own way 

 in the world. 



A temperamental factor is deeply involved in such a birth of de- 

 tachment from commitment. Indeed, the most extreme detachment 

 will be born from the most extreme commitment of the man of strong 

 self-confidence— commitment to his own competence to deal with 

 anything he may encounter. In examining his experiments such a 

 man feels no need to put on blinders, because there is nothing he is 

 afraid to see. He feels no need to shield his preconceived ideas, be- 

 cause he is confident that as required he can produce new and better 



