504 EXPERIMENT STATION EECOBD, 



profitable to quote some of them — but is it not sufficient to define 

 science as knoivledge which has acquired impersojutl validity f " 



Coming to the matter of records, these are recognized as being 

 fundamental in shaping the investigation and furnishing the motif 

 for the processes involved. Apparatus and appliances and methods 

 have their real purpose in the securing of trustworthy records. While 

 these records are primarily to help the original investigator, they 

 are preserved to assist his successor in checking and repeating his 

 work, 



" Scientific records have a far wider scope than ordinary business 

 records, which merely put down details that can not be carried in 

 the memory. Science strives constantly after new ways of recording 

 and demonstrating facts which would otherwise be imperfectly 

 known, or not known at all, and at the same time of eliminating the 

 personal factor by getting the data into a form to assist others in the 

 work of verification." This gives to the records of investigation a 

 new conception and importance. It leaves no uncertainty as to the 

 obligation and responsibility for their accumulation and preserva- 

 tion in intelligent form. 



" The progress of science is marked by the advance in the art of 

 making research records. We all admit, in other words, that the 

 progress of science depends partly on the perfecting of old methods, 

 but chiefly on the invention of new ones. Despite the enormous va- 

 riety in their nature and aims, all our technical methods have this in 

 common, that their real purpose is to yield us records. Our micro- 

 scopes, spectroscopes, measuring instruments, and many another 

 apparatus have indeed their primary scope in rendering possible ob- 

 servations wdiich are impossible with our unaided senses. • They 

 enlarge our field of inquiry and put precision within our reach. Yet 

 their usefulness is conditioned upon their enabling us to make records 

 which else would remain beyond our power. . . . 



" It is remarkable that the vast majority of methods and apparatus 

 are contrived to furnish a visible result. Sight has long been ac- 

 knowledged by science as the supreme sense. . . . A\nien we refer to 

 the history of modern medical science we begin with the anatomist 

 Vesalius, because he reintroduced reliance on seeing in place of reli- 

 ance on the reading of old authorities.'' 



Dr. Minot minimizes the importance of mathematics as a means of 

 expressing the results of science. He opposes the view that no sci- 

 ence is accurate until its results can be expressed mathematically, and 

 while recognizing the immense value of the graphic method, he main- 

 tains that mathematics are inadequate to exj^ress the complex rela- 

 tions with which biology deals. "With human minds constituted 

 as they actually are, we can not anticipate that there will ever be a 



