178 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1953 



The quotation I made from Hinshelwood's "Structure of Physical 

 Chemistry" is an example. I should like to quote two other passages 

 expressing the same thought : 



We have a paradox in the method of science. The research man may often 

 think and work like an artist, but he has to talk like a bookkeeper in terms of 

 facts, figures and logical sequence of thought. [H. D. Smyth, quoted by Gerald 

 Nolton in American Scientist, vol. 41, p. 93, 1953.] 



The great scientist must be regarded as a creative artist and it is quite false 

 to think of the scientist as a man who merely follows rules of logic and experi- 

 ment. [W. I. B. Beveridge, "The Art of Scientific Investigation," 1952.] 



It has been realized for a long time that the choice of a fruitful 

 research problem, the selection of a fertile hypothesis, and the genesis 

 of a brilliant theory are decisions whose quality differentiates the 

 greater scientist from the lesser. They are decisions for which no 

 rules of logic exist but in which the imagination and the intuition of 

 the investigator play the dominant part. In this sense the great 

 scientist is also an artist, and his imposing of a pattern on nature is 

 definitely an artistic creation. 



However, we may go further in establishing an affinity between art 

 and science along lines that were laid down by Martin Johnson a few 

 years ago in an interesting book entitled "Art and Scientific 

 Thought — Historical Studies Toward a Modern Revision of Their 

 Antagonism." The creative artist is one whose imagination gives 

 him a penetrating insight into the significance of human experience, 

 and whose craftsmanship enables him to build this insight into a 

 pattern or structure by which it is communicated to sophisticated 

 observers. In a disciplined art imagination does not become fantastic 

 but weaves ideas into a pattern that awakens the observer to a tran- 

 scending realization of some truth or experience. The actual ideas 

 conjured up in the mind of one observer may, however, differ in 

 detail from those of the artist or those of some other observer, de- 

 pending on their past experiences. Compare this with the work of 

 the creative scientist whose imagination sees the significant facts in 

 certain phenomena and leads him to weave these facts into a satisfying 

 pattern that he can communicate to others. The resemblance is 

 obvious, but there is one important difference; the patterns (theories) 

 of the scientist must be communicable to his audience in such a way 

 that formal deductions and interpretations made by each individual 

 agree exactly with those of any other individual and with those of the 

 author. This quantitative communicability of patterns of fact is the 

 characteristic that differentiates science from art and, even more, that 

 provides the only criterion for the validity of the scientist's facts and 

 patterns. As Martin Johnson remarks,^ 



» Art and scientific thought, p. 42. New York, 1949. 



