SCIENCE, ART, AND EDUCATION — GIBSON 181 



Up to this point we have discussed science, the creative arts, and 

 the useful arts and shown, I think, that these have much in common, 

 all containing the elements of pattern and communicability. In sci- 

 ence and the useful arts, the pattern and its elements (facts) must 

 be susceptible to quantitative and exact communication so that the 

 reader develops identically the meaning the author tries to give. Per- 

 haps the chief difference between science and the useful arts is that 

 the former strives toward patterns of general and even universal 

 comprehensiveness, whereas the latter is content with patterns of 

 very local application. The creative arts strive for patterns of uni- 

 versal comprehensiveness, but their communicability is qualitative 

 rather than quantitative. 



In the light of these thoughts, the quotation from H. D. Smyth 

 takes on a meaning that was not apparent before ; the scientist works 

 like an artist in making his patterns and like a bookkeeper in his 

 communications. 



ATTRIBUTES OF MIND IN RESEARCH 



In commenting on figure 2, we noted the integrated role played by 

 pure, or basic, scientific research in developing patterns of under- 

 standing to catalyze technological advances. This role is being real- 

 ized more and more, but it is by no means ingrained deeply in the 

 minds of those who have power to affect the research and develop- 

 ment policies of universities, industrial firms, and nations. There 

 is at present grave concern that there is a shortage of basic research 

 in this country, that the applied sciences with their greater material 

 rewards are draining away the remaining resources that are available 

 for the cultivation of pure science, and that we face a bankruptcy 

 of ideas for future developments. A real problem exists. It is a 

 problem whose ramifications extend much further than the need of 

 understanding on which to build tomorrow's technologies and whose 

 roots lie in the substratum of philosophy. Its solution involves much 

 more than short-range material considerations. In discussing this 

 subject let us first consider the attributes of mind and the education 

 of the research scientists who are the effective agents in producing 

 oscillations in the pure-research circuit. 



If we take a cross section of productive research workers in this 

 country, perhaps by studying the authors of articles in the better 

 journals, we find represented several kinds of minds which may be 

 classified as: (a) the Promethean, (b) the critical or analytical, (c) 

 the cumulative and inductive, (d) the cumulative and descriptive, 

 (e) the meticulous, (f) the routine-industrious. It is evident that 

 more than one of these attributes may be found in any given indi- 

 vidual, although one will generally predominate, (a) The Promethean 



