YALE UNIVERSITY'S RESEARCH 



our greatest fishing writers and former fishing editor of the 

 Miami Herald, conducts one at the University of Miami. 



The Yale scientists are constantly being asked, "Why study 

 ocean game fish?" In answer I quote from what Dan Merri- 

 man wrote several years ago for the Yale Scientific Magazine: 



There are two distinct answers to this question. The first is 

 best expressed by a quotation from Aristotle: 



"The search for truth is in one way hard and in another 

 easy, for it is evident that no one can master it fully nor miss 

 it fully. But each adds a little to our knowledge of nature, 

 and from all the facts assembled there arises grandeur." 

 This is what today is called pure science— knowledge for its 

 own sake. There is much emphasis in our time on applied 

 science, and vast public funds are expended towards the solu- 

 tion of problems of practical significance. Few will deny the 

 importance of such directed effort. But at the same time there 

 is the danger of disregarding the value of letting the free in- 

 quiring mind go where it will. I doubt that many people 

 would want to decide, if it were a choice between pure and 

 applied research, which had produced the greatest advances 

 in terms of human happiness and welfare, or for that matter, 

 which had led to the greatest number of so-called practical 

 benefits. The reason for such indecision on the part of any 

 thinking scientist is the number of examples he can cite of 

 researches which have been undertaken only to increase the 

 sum total of human knowledge, but which, in the long run, 

 have had practical application. Who would have predicted, 

 for example, that a knowledge of the sounds fishes make (and 

 the mechanisms by which they make them) would have been 

 of any use to man? Yet the confusion from fish noises to 

 those engaged in under-water sound detection in World War 

 II was such as to require an intensive Navy research program 

 on the subject. No one can foresee what practical result 



199 



