396 THE NEW WORLD OF SCIENCE 



while at the same time securing the advantages of wide 

 cooperation and division of labor, reducing unnecessary dupli- 

 cation x of work and providing the means of facilitating re- 

 search and promoting discovery and progress. 



A casual view of the problem of effecting such organization 

 of science might lead to the conclusion that the aims just 

 enumerated are mutually incompatible. It can be shown by 

 actual examples, however, that this is not the case, and that an 

 important advance, in harmony with Mr. Root's conception, 

 is entirely possible. 



It goes without saying that no scheme of organization, 

 effected by lesser men, can ever duplicate the epoch-making 

 discoveries of the Faradays, the Darwins, the Pasteurs, and 

 the Rayleighs, who have worked largely unaided, and who will 

 continue to open up the chief pathways of science. Even for 

 such men, however, organization can accomplish much, not by 

 seeking -to plan their researches or control their methods, but 

 by securing cooperation, if and when it is needed, and by ren- 

 dering unnecessary some of the routine work they are now 

 forced to perform. 



Let us now turn to some examples of organized research, 

 beginning with a familiar case drawn from the field of as- 

 tronomy, where the wide expanse of the heavens and the natural 

 limitations of single observers, and even of the largest observa- 

 tories, led long ago to cooperative effort. 



In the words of the late Sir David Gill, then Astronomer 

 Royal at the Cape of Good Hope, the great comet of 1882 

 showed " an astonishing brilliancy as it rose behind the moun- 

 tains on the east of Table Bay, and seemed in no way diminished 

 in brightness when the sun rose a few minutes afterward. It 

 was only necessary to shade the eye from direct sunlight with 

 a hand at arm's length, to see the comet, with its brilliant white 

 nucleus and dense white, sharply bordered tail of quite half a 

 degree in length." This extraordinary phenomenon, more 

 brilliant than any comet since 1843, marked the beginning of 



1 Some duplication is frequently desirable. 



