340 CREATIVE SCIENCE 



Mitscherlich's report that the crystals of tartaric and racemic acids 

 are identical in structure violated a law of hemihedral correlation 

 credited by Pasteur, and so disturbed him that he undertook to re- 

 peat Mitscherlich's work. Pasteur could have had no expectation of 

 what he was to find. But he was "set" to look for diflFerences where 

 Mitscherlich had found only identity, and his attention was more 

 narrowly focused than Mitscherlich's— on the hemihedral facets 

 rather than on the crystals as a whole. Most of all, Pasteur was pre- 

 pared to recognize what was presented to his eyes, as to Mitscher- 

 lich's, because he could at once grasp the meaning of what he ob- 

 served. 



Intelligence and temperament. When prior anticipatory ideas 

 point to some specific possible novelty, that novelty is not discovered 

 accidentally. But, though strong enough markedly to depress the TI, 

 Pasteur's expectation of novelty was here wholly formless— and 

 chance still played a substantial role in his discovery: e.g., very few 

 racemic mixtures are spontaneously resolved as this one happened to 

 be. Whether or not we deem Pasteur's discovery accidental is really 

 quite irrelevant. The crucial factor in his success is precisely that 

 suggested by Whewell's comment that: 



No scientific discovery can, with any justice, be considered due to 

 accident. . . . facts cannot be obsei-ved as Facts except in virtue of 

 the Conceptions which the observer himself unconsciously sup- 

 plies; . . . 



Just so Beveridge comments that "Noticing ... is mainly a mental 

 process"; and Bernard writes, of a missed opportunity in his own il- 

 lustrious career, that: 



. . . we had the fact under our eyes and did not see it because it 

 conveyed nothing to our mind. 



Pasteur did not miss his opportunity. Confronting what had before 

 confronted Mitscherlich, he noticed what had before been unseen 

 because he could produce the idea that made a phenomenon where 

 before there had been none. 



Intelligence can thus teach the scientist how a discrepancy may be 

 a phenomenon. Conversely, grasping that possibility, he may come 

 fully to recognize a discrepancy of which he was earlier only mar- 

 ginally aware. We have all had personal experience of the "double 



