GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH.^ 



Bj- Arthur L. Day. 



To write the history of the earth is a very different undertaking 

 from AVTiting the history of a people. In the latter case, a diligent 

 seeker can usually find some ancient monastery where farsighted 

 historians of an earlier generation haye collected the more important 

 records wliich he requires, and placed them wdthin reach of his hand. 

 With the earth's history, which is the province of geology, it is an- 

 other matter. The great globe has been millions of years in the 

 making, and except for a mere fragment of its most recent history, 

 it has had neither a historian nor an observer. Its formation has 

 not only extended over an almost incomprehensible interval of time, 

 but we have no parallel in our limited experience to help us to under- 

 stand its complicated development, and no system of classification 

 adequate to the task even of grouping in an orderly w^ay all the ob- 

 served rock and mineral formations with reference to the forces 

 which molded them. And even if we could correctly interpret all 

 the visible rock records we are still quite helpless to comprehend all 

 those earlier activities of the formation period, whose record is now 

 obliterated. 



To the student of the earth's history, therefore, the problem of 

 gathering and ordering such a wndely scattered and heterogeneous 

 collection of effects and causes is one of somewhat overwhelming 

 scope and complication. In the industrial world a situation of this 

 kind soon results in replacing individual effort with collective effort 

 in the organization of a system of a scope more appropriate to the 

 magnitude of the task. We arc familiar with industrial organiza- 

 tion and the wonderful progress in the development of American 

 industries which has everywhere followed it. We are also familiar 

 wath organized geological surveys and the success w^hich has attended 

 them in geological and topographical classification. But the idea of 

 organizing research to meet a scientific situation of extraordinary 

 scope and complexity is still comparatively new. The very words 

 "science" and "research" are still regarded as referring to something 

 out of the ordinary, something to be withheld from the common gaze, 



> Presidential address delivered at the 700th meeting of the Philosophical Society of Washington, Novem- 

 ber 25, 1911. Reprinted by permission from Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences, vol. 1, No. 9, 

 December 4, 1911, pp. 247-2G0. 



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