NEW GENERATION OF SCIENTISTS—HAWKINS 427 
has ever been available before. How far those hopes will be realized, 
or how far they will be disappointed, will depend on the quantity and 
quality of available research workers. More will be needed than ever 
before, and not every boy or girl has the aptitudes needed for suc- 
cessful research. Those aptitudes must be sought for, and, when 
discovered, encouraged and developed, if the nation’s research needs— 
the needs of industry, of governmental laboratories, of medical in- 
stitutions, of universities—are to be met. That is the all-important 
task which faces the science teachers of our high schools. That is 
why any heightening of your efficiency may produce unforeseeable 
benefits to our nation’s welfare. That is why this program will have 
potentialities for good, greatly exceeding its immediate benefit to you. 
NEED FOR PUBLIC UNDERSTANDING OF RESEARCH 
In spite of the prevalent enthusiasm for scientific research, there 
are some who have strange ideas of its nature. There are some who 
might read into my foregoing remarks the purely materialistic desire 
that as many adaptable children as possible should be shaped into little 
cogs to fit the industrial machine. Of course a conception of indus- 
trial research which would class a Whitney, Coolidge, or Langmuir 
as a cog is absurd, but no more absurd than the dictum gravely pro- 
nounced from the bench of a Federal court that industrial research 
may involve no more than finding a needle in a haystack by the simple 
process of dividing the haystack into a large number of small segments 
and then hiring an equal number of hands to paw through their 
respective segments. Such a misconception would be too abysmal to 
deserve notice, were not this court in a position to affect profoundly 
the patent laws and consequently the technology of our nation; but I 
have cited it because it reveals the same ignorance of the intellectual 
process involved in scientific work that is shown by those who deplore 
the spread of science teaching in our schools as an encroachment on the 
cultural studies. 
By cultural studies are usually meant literature, history, and foreign 
languages, which for generations have stood as the pillars of our school 
curricula, based on the initial mastery of the three R’s. It is not our 
intention to minimize the cultural value of those stand-bys. Litera- 
ture and history especially are essential ingredients of any culture. 
However, it must be insisted that in these times science should and 
must take its place beside them with full parity as an essential to 
culture. 
J. W. N. Sullivan has written in his book, Limitations of Science, 
that, “Science * * * is now the dominant intellectual interest of 
mankind.” Can a man be called truly cultured if he is ignorant of 
“the dominant intellectual interest of mankind”? The study of science 
725362—47—29 
