THE SCIENCE OF BIOLOGY 427 



unique about research. In its essentials, research is merely the rigor- 

 ous application of the human mind to fact finding and the rigid 

 employment of the rules of logic in interpreting the significance 

 of facts. All human progress in all past time and all that may be 

 expected in the future arise from just these endeavors. Research 

 that really contributes to knowledge and to welfare requires faith- 

 ful application to sound principles, imagination, and utter honesty 

 and open-mindedness. The fund of human knowledge has grown 

 and will continue to grow by small accretions. The entire effort of 

 a lifetime may be and most frequently is devoted to polishing one 

 minute facet, to clarification of one small group of facts. In general, 

 the investigator does not concern himself with an obscure animal 

 primarily because his major interest is concentrated on that par- 

 ticular animal, but because the type of animal furnishes suitable 

 material for the study of biological phenomena that are more or 

 less generally applicable. A student of Protozoology, for instance, 

 attempts to discover just what the lives of Protozoa reveal that has 

 a bearing on the nature of life processes in general. 



New truths of science are discovered when observations are fitted 

 together to form a tentative explanation or hypothesis. The hypothe- 

 sis or theory is thus first formulated by inductive reasoning from 

 some facts at hand. Then the theory is tested by fitting with other 

 facts and searches are instituted for still more facts. Often the facts 

 do not fit the theory and the theory must be discarded or revised. 

 Perhaps the greatest advance that ever has been made by scientists 

 is the overthrow of the rule of authority that marked the long 

 period of the Middle Ages. Science recognizes as of permanent value 

 only the facts of the behavior of bodies in the environment, not 

 what any person may have said about such facts. Sometimes the 

 facts do not fit any theory that has been proposed and the solution 

 of the problem then awaits the discovery of more facts or the de- 

 velopment of a new theory. When a theory has been so fitted to 

 the facts at hand that it is possible to predict or to describe in ad- 



