kluyver's contributions to microbiology and biochemistry 



him search for concepts that could help to tie various known facts to- 

 gether, and he was wont to defend this attitude by quoting the felici- 

 tous phrase of A. V. Hill, 'It is dangerous to speculate too far, but it 

 is foolish not to speculate at all'. 



It cannot be denied that, if an hypothesis can be made to accom- 

 modate apparently unrelated or even conflicting observations, the ten- 

 dency to speculate is sometimes conducive to generating a feeling of 

 confidence rather than to performing experiments, especially such as 

 might throw a different fight on a particular problem. A case in 

 point is the earlier discussed investigation on co-zymase. Surely 

 the mechanism of alcoholic fermentation proposed by Kluyver and 

 Struyk, however much of an advance it represented over other 

 theories current at the time, still left a great deal to be explained. 

 And the general state of ignorance concerning the composition and 

 mode of action of enzymes was no justification for the tacit assump- 

 tion that there should be no need for the cooperation of small mole- 

 cules with as yet unexplained functions. 



Be that as it may, it is impossible to determine at just what point 

 speculation will become dangerous. Moreover, the danger can easily 

 be exaggerated, and in any case it is less so to science than to the 

 speculator, who may be entranced by a preconceived notion to the 

 point of not recognizing alternative possibilities. But since scientists, 

 like microbes, vary a great deal in their predilections, there will al- 

 ways be some who are not so taken in, and, by following other ap- 

 proaches, provide the information that is essential in checking and 

 correcting assumptions that lack a sufficient experimental basis. For 

 science is a curious amalgam of art and matter, and its most out- 

 standing characteristic is that rival hypotheses are ultimately re- 

 solved not by personal preference but by the force of impersonal 

 facts; accumulated observational evidence is the only final arbiter. 

 This does not mean, however, that the elements of art and imagi- 

 nation can be dismissed as irrelevant in scientific pursuits; they are 

 as essential as factual data because it is through their exercise that 

 extant knowledge can be integrated and new data can be collected 

 in a meaningful manner. Besides, the search for general relationships 

 has the refreshing effect that it leads to interpreting isolated events 

 as coordinated phenomena, and thus guards against getting bogged 

 down in details. 



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