THE PRODUCTION OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE 189 



scientific workers. Nevertheless, inquiry will show that even 

 where the laboratory and its chief have become famous, the 

 direction of the laboratory was weak, and success ^vas due to 

 the gieat skill sho^vn by the chief and those who worked di- 

 rectly with him in his own problems. In a university labora- 

 tory, the junior scientists are there for only a short time; they 

 are still learning the methods of research and will soon pass 

 on to other positions. Neglect by a chief absorbed in his own 

 problems can be tolerated by such men; but in an industrial 

 laboratory or a research institute, where men spend their 

 whole career, such neglect leads to much unhappiness and 

 frustration.* The point at issue can be understood, perhaps 

 from an analogy. The type of organization generally adopted 

 is derived from the military analogy. The department leaders 

 correspond to officers who give orders to their subordinates. 

 But the true analogy of a scientific research organization is 

 not an army; it is an orchestra. Each musician of an orchestra 

 is important and independent; the members are correlated 

 through the conductor, who is represented in the laboratory 

 by the department head or in small laboratories by the di- 

 rector. It is not the duty of the laboratory head to command 

 his scientific staff; it is his duty to lead it. Thus the military 

 type of organization usually adopted for industrial labora- 



* P. L. Kapitza (Voks Bulletin, No. 9-10 [1943]) believes that the 

 director of a laboratory cannot be effective unless he works with his 

 own hands. He says: "Only when one works in the laboratory oneself, 

 with one's own hands, conducting experiments, even the most routine 

 parts of them,— only under these conditions can real results be achieved 

 in science. Good work cannot be done with other people's hands. A 

 person who devotes ten or twenty minutes a day in directing scientific 

 work can never be a great scientist. At least, I never saw or heard of 

 a great scientist who worked in that manner, and I do not think it can 

 be done. I am certain, that the very moment even the greatest scientist 

 stops working in the laboratory himself, he not only ceases to develop 

 but, in general, ceases to be a scientist." Kapitza, however, is speaking 

 of an institute employing only a very few scientists, and he acknowledges 

 that when the work expands and development work is involved, the 

 time of the director will be taken up with other matters than work in 

 the laboratory. 



