CHAPTER FOUR 



HYPOTHESIS 



" In science the primary duty of ideas is to be useful and 

 interesting even more than to be ' true '." — Wilfred Trotter 



Illustrations 



THE role of hypothesis in research can be discussed more 

 effectively if we consider first some examples of discoveries 

 which originated from hypotheses. One of the best illustrations 

 of such a discovery is provided by the story of Christopher 

 Columbus' voyage ; it has many of the features of a classic dis- 

 covery in science, {a) He was obsessed with an idea — that since 

 the world is round he could reach the Orient by sailing west, 

 (b) the idea was by no means original, but evidently he had 

 obtained some additional evidence from a sailor blown off his 

 course who claimed to have reached land in the west and 

 returned, (c) he met great difficulties in getting someone to 

 provide the money to enable him to test his idea as well as in the 

 actual carrying out of the experimental voyage, (d) when finally 

 he succeeded he did not find the expected new route, but instead 

 found a whole new world, ( e ) despite all evidence to the contrary 

 he clung to the bitter end to his hypothesis and beheved that he 

 had found the route to the Orient, (/) he got little credit or 

 reward during his lifetime and neither he nor others realised the 

 full implications of his discovery, (g) since his time evidence 

 has been brought forward showing that he was by no means the 

 first European to reach America. 



In his early investigations on diphtheria, Loffler showed that 

 in experimental animals dying after inoculation with the diph- 

 theria bacillus, the bacteria remained localised at the site of 

 injection. He suggested that death was caused by toxin produced 

 by the bacteria. Following this hypothesis, Emile Roux made 

 numerous experiments attempting to demonstrate such a toxin 

 in cultures of bacteria, but, try as he might, he could not 



41 



