THE ART OF SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION 



written on the subject conditions the mind to see the problem in 

 the same way and makes it more difficuh to find a new and fruit- 

 ful approach. There are even some grounds for discouraging an 

 excessive amount of reading in the general field of science in 

 which one is going to work. Charles Kettering, who was associated 

 with the discovery of tetraethyl lead as an anti-knock agent in 

 motor fuels and the development of diesel engines usable in trucks 

 and buses, said that from studying conventional text-books we 

 fall into a rut and to escape from this takes as much effort as to 

 solve the problem. Many successful investigators were not trained 

 in the branch of science in which they made their most brilliant 

 discoveries : Pasteur, Metchnikoff and Galvani are well-known 

 examples. A sheepman named J. H. W. Mules, who had no 

 scientific training, discovered a means of preventing blowfly 

 attack in sheep in Australia when many scientists had failed. 

 Bessemer, the discoverer of the method of producing cheap steel, 

 said : 



" I had an immense advantage over many others dealing with 

 the problem inasmuch as I had no fixed ideas derived from long 

 established practice to control and bias my mind, and did not 

 suffer from the general belief that whatever is, is right." 



But in his case, as with many such "outsiders", ignorance and 

 freedom from established patterns of thought in one field were 

 joined with knowledge and training in other fields. In the same 

 vein is the remark by Bernard that " it is that which we do know 

 which is the great hindrance to our learning not that which we do 

 not know." The same dilemma faces all creative workers. Byron 

 wrote : 



" To be perfectly original one should think much and read 

 little, and this is impossible, for one must have read before one 

 has learnt to think." 



Shaw's quip " reading rots the mind " is, characteristically, not 

 quite so ridiculous as it appears at first. 



The explanation of this phenomenon seems to be as follows. 

 When a mind loaded with a wealth of information contemplates 

 a problem, the relevant information comes to the focal point of 



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