May 27, 1920] 



NATURE 



387 



Letters to the Editor. 



[The Editor does not hold himself responsible for 

 opinions expressed by his correspondents. Neither 

 can he undertake to return, or to correspond with 

 the writers of^ rejected manuscripts intended for 

 this or any other part of Nature. No notice is 

 taken of anonymous communications.] 



Scientific Work: Its Spirit and Reward. 



The true incentive of the scientific worker is his 

 work. Through his work he expresses the creative 

 thought within him, which he feels to be his highest 

 life. This expression must through its very nature 

 be free, otherwise he becomes a slave in the worst 

 sense, in that the free exercise of intelligence is 

 denied him. 



Because this freedom is sacred to the scientific 

 worker he sometimes has to sacrifice income and the 

 possibility of family life to retain it, but this is a mere 

 misfortune, not in any sense a necessary concomitant 

 of scientific ability. The sentimentalist and the ex- 

 ploiter have promulgated the idea that the scientific 

 worker, being exalted above the need for normal 

 human joys and amenities, works best on the smallest 

 possible income; or, having found that this does not 

 always work out in practice because it tends to reduce 

 the output of useful results, as the reduction of rations 

 to one bean per day led to the unfortunate demise of 

 the horse, the opposite line is taken, and it is supposed 

 that by large remuneration the valuable work looked 

 for can be bought. 



Neither the one nor the other point of view is 



iirrect. The scientific worker if he "is normal needs 



:ie means to enable him to have a happy, care-free 



home-life, and to educate his children in such a way 



that they in turn may be free as he would be. There- 



''>re to starve him is to eliminate the normal and con- 



quently intelligent worker in favour of the eccentric. 



or let it be clearly stated, the highest intelligence is 



;\vays supremely sane. The idea of a scientific worker 



< a harmless lunatic is by no means confined tc) sen- 



itional fiction, although it might as well be imagined 



that every long-haired user of a piano is a Paderewski, 



or every loose-tied splasher of paint on canvas a 



Sargent. 



On the other hand, to believe that creative thought 

 can be purchased with money is to repeat the mistake 

 of Simon Magus. Imitative thought in all its mani- 

 festations can be obtained for an adequate remunera- 

 tion, because it can be produced by outward drill, 

 discipline, and experience. So experts in the orderly 

 routine dear to the official mind can be turned out 

 by mass-production like cheap crockery, and are simi- 

 larlv useful and indispensable. 



There is, however, no means of estimating the value 

 of one reallv original thou£«ht either in pure or in so- 

 called applied science. Certainly the possession of 

 anything like its value in money would often be an 

 embarrassment to the scientific worker through whom 

 it is expressed. He also would be the first to disclaim 

 any absolute or exclusive right to it. In the last 

 analysis, humanly speaking, there is no such thing 

 as an absolutely original idea, and it is seldom that 

 anv single individual can claim undivided credit for 

 bringing a new idea to birth. 



On the other hand, to divide its money-value, if it 

 have any, in such a way that little or nothing comes 

 back to the immediate originator is simply unjust, and 

 therefore ultimatelv disastrous. 



A certain tvpe of person sniffs at Lord Kelvin for 

 havinrf become nart owner of numerous imoortant | 

 patents. No one will deny Lord Kelvin's position as 1 



NO. 2639, VOL. 105] 



a scientific worker ; that he was also a business man 

 merely means that his gifts were more readily applied 

 to the good of humanity. 



That a scientific worker should be debarred from 

 any reward or protection by patents embodving his 

 discoveries, because of his occupying either a public 

 or private salaried position, is not onlv unjust, but 

 also often unbusinesslike and against the public in- 

 terest. The equitable adjustment of rights and 

 returns as between public or private capital and the 

 actual in\;entor is often the only way to prevent 

 exploitation by purely selfish private interests. 



To repeat, the true incentive of the scientific worker 

 is his work. Salary, kudos, position, esprit de corps — 

 these are incentives to good and useful people, but 

 they are not the true incentives of the real scientific 

 worker. To obtain the best from him, he must before 

 all things have freedom, and, if possible, also a 

 reasonable measure of justice. 



"The bearings of this obserwation," as Capt. 

 Bunsby in " Dombey and Son" remarked, "lavs in 

 the application on it." 



Gilbert J. Fowler. 



Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India. 



Applied Science and Industrial Research. 



.\t a meeting held at the Birkbeck College on 

 April 28, organised by the National Union of Scientific 

 Workers to urge more public support of scientific 

 research. Prof. Soddy, the principal speaker after 

 Mr. H. G. Wells, who occupied the chair, made a 

 strong attack on the Department of Scientific and 

 Industrial Research and the industrial research 

 associations which have been, and are being, 

 established under its aegis (see Nature for May 6, 

 p. 309). As much of Prof. Soddy's criticism seems to 

 lend colour to current misconceptions of industrial 

 research and of the functions of the research associa- 

 tions fathered by the Department of Scientific and 

 Industrial Research, I beg the hospitality of your 

 space for the following observations. 



No one disputes the vital and urgent need for in- 

 creasing the facilities for scientific study and scientific 

 research. All those who know the facts will echo 

 Mr. H. G. Wells's just indignation at the national 

 neglect of science and the half contemptuous treat- 

 ment by the State of our great men of science. I 

 go further and agree with Prof. Soddv that in the 

 extension and intensification of scientific study and 

 research the claims of pure science must be primary 

 and paramount. But I deny emphatically that this 

 involves a similarly short-sighted and contemptuous 

 attitude towards the needs of applied science and 

 industrial research. If English industry has suffered 

 too long from the dominance of mere rule-of-thumb 

 methods; if our manufacturers have, through ignor- 

 ance, underrated the value of science, the fault has 

 not been wholly and exclusively theirs. The academic 

 people who have contemned applied science and in- 

 dustrial technology as something little better than a 

 crude empiricism must bear some share of the blame. 

 The manufacturer may have kept his feet too much 

 in the mud ; the academician has too often kept his 

 head entirelv in the clouds. If one has been too dis- 

 dainful of scientific methods that did not ensure or 

 oromise immediate dividends in cash, the other has 

 talked at times as though the mere prospect of a 

 utilitarian issue to a specific research were enough 

 to defile it and make it unworthy of his serious atten- 

 tion. We all know the tvpe of academic science 

 worker to whom an investigation of the internal^ struc- 

 ture of the atom is a noble and purifying pursuit, and 



