NA TURE 



97 



THURSDAY, MARCH 24, 1921. 



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Research and National Progress. 



SIR ALFRED MOND, in a speech at the anni- 

 versary dinner of the Chemical Society on 

 March 17, said that the attitude of the House of 

 Commons towards research was much the same 

 as that which led to the loss of the dye industry 

 to this country, and it was manifested recently in 

 the attacks made upon his proposal to spend a 

 few hundred pounds on a laboratory where in- 

 vestigations could be carried out on the behaviour 

 of concrete under different conditions. It is evi- 

 dent, therefore, that there are still people in posi- 

 tions of authority who do not understand the 

 significance of research, and prefer the experience 

 of a practical man to the results of the most 

 careful scientific inquiry. Under the stress of 

 competition such experience often represents the 

 principle of the survival of the fittest, and has, 

 therefore, to be given careful consideration ; but 

 more often it carries with it many vestigial char- 

 acters which can be discarded without loss of 

 function, and possibly with profit. 



Research does not, "however, signify merely the 

 scientific testing of designs and methods with the 

 object of discovering the factors essential to the 

 fulfilment of a particular purpose. It is true that 

 the chief part of industrial research is concerned 

 with problems of this kind, bat though the results 

 thus obtained may improve a product or make a 

 process more profitable, they rarely have more 

 than a limited influence upon industrial progress. 

 NO. 2682, VOL. 107] 



The greatest advances are made, not by increas- 

 ing the effectiveness of known instruments or 

 methods, but by the opening up of completely 

 new fields, and this is more often accomplished by 

 independent and incidental scientific discovery 

 than by the study of particular problems in the 

 light of existing knowledge. 



The functions of the industrial research worker 

 are, indeed, those of inventors who, like one of 

 the groups of fellows in Francis Bacon's Solo- 

 mon's House, devote themselves to the applica- 

 tion of experiments " to draw out of them things 

 of use, and practice for man's life, and know- 

 ledge." Such workers have a definite object in 

 view, and cannot depart from it into the by-paths 

 which in purely scientific research frequently lead 

 to the mbst fertile regions. The publications of 

 scientific societies abound in rich fruits of fact 

 and principle garnered from these fields, and 

 from them the inventor or industrial research 

 worker selects what seems to him likely to satisfy 

 his needs. It is the joy of the chase which in- 

 spires the scientific huntsman to continue the pur- 

 suit of new knowledge, and he is usually content 

 to let others make use of the spoils. 



The desire to discover and the insight which 

 discerns practical possibilities in results obtained 

 are thus complementary faculties. To one, pro- 

 gress signifies contributions to the sum of human 

 knowledge ; to the other, their profitable exploita- 

 tion. One type communicates freely to the world 

 whatever it has learned by research ; the other 

 seeks to secure patent rights and personal reward 

 for what it devises. Oersted's discovery of the 

 magnetic action of an electric current led eventu- 

 ally to the electric telegraph; Faraday's work on 

 magneto-electricity to the dynamo, and all that is 

 associated with it; Clerk Maxwell and Hertz's to 

 wireless telegraphy; Crookes's tube to X-rays; 

 Fleming's studies of the Edison effect to therm- 

 ionic valves ; the production of ductile tungsten to 

 metallic filament electric lamps, of Perkin's mauve 

 to the synthetic dyes industry, of acetylene to the 

 oxyacetylene welding process, of potassium to the 

 whole electrolytic industry, and of various rare 

 metals to a series of alloys of prime industrial 

 importance. In these and hundreds of other 

 similar examples the seeds were first found by 

 purely scientific workers, and it was usually not 

 until some years later that they were planted and 

 cultivated by ingenious practical men so that the 

 human race could benefit by the fruits from the 

 great trees that have sprung from them. 



Just as wealth has to be created before it can 



