THE ART OF SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION 



to exercise his ingenuity, originality and judgment and take 

 advantage of every useful stratagem. F. C. S. Schiller wrote : 



" Methods that succeed must have value. . . . The success has 

 shown that in this case the enquirer was right to select the facts 

 he fixed upon as significant, and to neglect the rest as irrelevant, 

 to connect them as he did by the ' laws ' he applied to them, to 

 theorise about them as he did, to perceive the analogies, to 

 weigh the chances, as he did, to speculate and to run the risks 

 he did. But only in this case. In the very next case, which he 

 takes to be * essentially the same ' as the last, and as nearly 

 analogous as is humanly possible, he may find that the differences 

 (which always exist between cases) are relevant, and that his 

 methods and assumptions have to be modified to cope with it 

 successfully."®" 



Research has been likened to warfare against the unknown. 

 This suggests some useful analogies as to tactics. The first con- 

 sideration is proper preparation by marshaUing all available 

 resources of data and information, as well as the necessary 

 material and equipment. The attacker will have a great advantage 

 if he can bring to bear a new technical weapon. The procedure 

 most likely to lead to an advance is to concentrate one's forces 

 on a very restricted sector chosen because the enemy is believed 

 to be weakest there. Weak spots in the defence may be found by 

 preliminary scouting or by tentative attacks; when a stiff resis- 

 tance is encountered it is usually better to seek a way around it 

 by some manoeuvre instead of persisting in a frontal attack. 

 Very occasionally, when a really important break-through is 

 effected, it may be expedient, although risky, to overrun quickly 

 a large territory and leave much of the consolidation to followers, 

 provided the work is important enough to attract them. However, 

 generally speaking, advances proceed by stages; when a new 

 position is taken it should be firmly consoHdated before any 

 attempt is made to use it as a base for further advance. This 

 rhythm is the normal form of progression not only in scientific 

 research but in all forms of scholarship : the gathering of 

 information leads naturally to a pause for synthesis and interpreta- 

 tion which in turn is followed by another stage of collection of 

 crude data selected in light of the new generalisations reached. 

 Even in applied research, such as the investigation of a disease 



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