THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 



1915- 



^■^ RESEARCH. 



^Hp*HE principal part of all scientific discovery 

 ^H. and research in past time has been the re- 

 ^^t of private or individual work. Men of great 

 ^rig-inality and genius have struck out new lines 

 of thought, or made epoch-making discoveries in 

 moments of inspiration. Men of lesser originality, 

 but painstaking workers, have contributed to 

 knowledge by careful measurements or patient 

 observations. In many cases useful partnerships 

 of two or three have been established, in which 

 *^ members have shared the labour and each 

 ^^^Mtributed something the other lacked. In the 

 '■pBly days of research, when the means of in- 

 vestigation in laboratories or apparatus were 

 limited, only those who possessed in a high degree 

 the capacity for discovery found or made oppor- 

 tunity to carry on such work and secure publica- 

 tion for it. At the present time, when laboratory 

 accommodation is extensive and the numbers of 

 the workers greatly multiplied, the diflficulty is 

 rather to find new subjects for research than the 

 means wherewith to do it. 



The result of this is seen in an enormous in- 

 crease in the amount of published scientific 

 memoirs, and in the disconnected nature of 

 much of it. The Proceedings of our learned 

 societies, from the Royal Society downwards, and 

 of the technical institutions as well, are a record 

 of an ever-increasing number of papers on sub- 

 jects, for the time being, attracting attention, but 

 which are quite detached in their manner of deal- 

 ing with it. Take, for example, such topics as 

 radio-activity, electric waves or oscillations, 

 ionisation of gases, wireless telegraphy, radiation, 

 and many other popular fields of research, and 

 consider the enormous number of papers describ- 

 ing experiments on these subjects which have 

 been published during the last twenty years. We 

 have here the product of much arduous labour on 

 the part of an army of scientific workers. Certain 

 discoveries and papers stand out as landmarks 

 and epoch-making. On the other hand, it is 

 impossible to avoid asking the question whether 

 much of the work of those who may perhaps be 

 described as the privates and officers of lower 

 rank in the scientific army could not have been 

 made to yield more valuable results if it had been 

 better co-ordinated and directed. 



In no class of work involving many workers 

 can we dispense with organisation. An army is 

 NO. 2402, VOL. 96I 



NATURE 



279 



not a collection of armed individuals. It is a 

 machine in which each man is an element, with 

 place and duty. An effective and successful com- 

 mercial institution, such as a railway company, 

 is a complicated organism, and not a multitude 

 of persons, each playing for his own hand. The 

 present method of conducting scientific research 

 is a go-as-you-please method, in which each man 

 does what his own inclinations suggest to him or 

 the means at disposal allow him to do. It is 

 perfectly certain that, as the result of this war, 

 the British Empire will have forced upon it in all 

 departments of activity, first, greater economy 

 in the use of materials; secondly, greater effici- 

 ency in the workers; and, thirdly, greater de- 



mand for value in the result. We have to 



get 



rid, in every department of work, whether politics, 

 commerce, manufacture, or domestic life, of 

 waste, inefficiency, and make-believe or valueless 

 products. We have to get rid of them in scien- 

 tific research as well. 



This can only be done by limiting the individual 

 initiative and adopting greater and more carefully 

 thought-out co-operation. It is well, therefore, to 

 begin to consider the lines on which these reforms 

 shall proceed. In the first place, they must begin 

 at the fountain head. We must ask for greater 

 effectiveness and more valuable results from the 

 learned societies, because these represent the 

 tendencies and ideals of the leaders of science. 

 The Royal Society was originally founded to 

 stimulate and encourage scientific investigation 

 into natural phenomena, and its analogue in the 

 technical realm, the Institution of Civil Engin- 

 eers, to promote the utilisation of the forces and 

 energies of nature for the use and benefit of man- 

 kind. Whilst these great objects are undoubtedly 

 assisted by the facilities offered by these societies 

 for the publication of accounts of new knowledge 

 or new achievements, one great purpose which 

 perhaps they might much more adequately fulfil 

 should be to point out and direct the forces and 

 energies of research in new and useful channels. 



There is one way in which this might be done, 

 and that is by carefully organised discussions on 

 definite large problems and questions lying at the 

 boundaries of our knowledge. The usefulness of 

 the British Association meetings has been greatly 

 increased of late years by such general dis- 

 cussions, as a result of much criticism by Sir 

 William Tilden, Prof. H. E. Armstrong, Sir 

 Oliver Lodge, and others. 



Why, then, should not the Royal Society devote 

 several meetings during the session to general 



M 



