PROCEEDINGS OF THE OHIO ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 285 



be an accepted theory that if anything is to be done or ought to 

 be done it is only necessary to form an organization of those 

 who think it ought to be done, after which it is often assumed 

 that in some mysterious way the thing will do itself. There is 

 no part of the country however remote or difficult of access that 

 has not been penetrated by and permeated with this malady, and 

 clubs, associations, circles, etc., have been formed in bewildering 

 numbers and perplexing confusion as to origin and raison d'etre. 

 Persons cynically inclined have attributed this to the fact that 

 each organization requires a president and other officers and 

 that the universal desire for place-holding is thus gratified. While 

 there is doubtless more truth in this explanation than we would 

 care to acknowledge, the phenomenon is largely the outcome of 

 the modern drift towards specialization in all spheres of human 

 activity. Indeed it is more than a drift; it is a veritable flood- 

 tide and many organizations of recent creation are examples of 

 specialization gone mad. 



Scientific men have not escaped this epidemic and during the 

 past twenty years their segregation into groups each of which 

 confines its activities in study and research to a special and often 

 a very narrow field, has gone on with alarming rapiditv. Alarm- 

 ing because while there can be no question that science has been 

 and will continue to be greatly advanced by specialization it can 

 not be denied that the man of science has suffered and will 

 continue to suffer from the same cause. Burrowing in a trench, 

 necessary as that operation often is, if persisted in to the ex- 

 clusion of other occupations, deprives the burro wer of that 

 breadth of view and general acquaintance with the topography 

 of the surrounding country which is necessary to the understand- 

 ing, direction or control of larger operations. It will be admitted 

 that up to the present time the epoch-making generalizations in 

 science have originated with men, who, though profound students 

 of some great subdivision of human knowledge, have not been 

 given to acute specialization. Although we may not expect an- 

 other Bacon to rise and declare, "I have taken all knowledge to 

 be my province," it is safe to predict that if we are to have in 

 the future discoveries of a magnitude comparable with that ot 



