24 IOWA ACADEMY OP SCIENCES. 



Fellow laborers, we are not doing our duty. We are too 

 often content with quantity instead of quality. We cover too 

 much ground and look for premature results. We fail to keep 

 in mind the great idea, that method is more than matter, that 

 the result we seek is not accumulation but power, not acquisi- 

 tion but capacity, not bulk but strength. And we also forget 

 that every scientist is a teacher, whether officially so or not. 

 I believe that science and scientific study have a direct bearing 

 on human existence. I believe that the sciences are not merely 

 interesting, disciplinary as studies, practical when applied in 

 the industrial arts, but that the more scientific people are the 

 happier they are, not that they are warmer, or less hungry, or 

 more intellectual, but that they are better adapted to their sur- 

 roundings. In other words life ought to mean more than strug- 

 gle, acquisition and success, it should mean better relation- 

 ships. I do not believe that the chief end of scientific training 

 is skill in invention. I do not think the chief business of the 

 scientist is to produce something practical. This age is pre- 

 eminently practical, and in so far as it is so it depends largely 

 on scientific methods in vogue. But the satisfaction of bodily 

 wants and natural ambitions is not the goal of scientific research. 

 We need not less but more theory with our practice. The man 

 without a theory is as unbalanced as one with nothing but a 

 theory. The aim of scientific research is to find the ideal 

 adjustment of man to his environment, and that relation will 

 never be attained by purely practical means. 



We see to-day an immense number of so-called investigators 

 engaged in original research. Probably one-half of these know 

 little or nothing beyond their specialties. Many of them are 

 engaged in matters of little general import, and see only a very 

 circumscribed horizon. Many of them are unable to see the 

 relations of their special studies to anything else. So they 

 drift into empiricism, narrowness, and dogmatic assertions. 

 We are leaching men to specialize before they can generalize, 

 and the results must be unfortunate. A large part of these 

 investigators are entirely out of place. To become a specialist 

 in science one must be more than merely able to manipulate a 

 microscope, or to set up a dynamo, or to mix chemicals without 

 a disastrous explosion. Whatever may be said pro and con 

 regarding the old system of industrial apprenticeship, this is 

 certain, that no one can become a reliable investigator without 

 a long and laborious service of preparation. We are putting 



