5»4 



NATURE 



[January 29, 1920 



we were desiring to secure important practical results 

 as rapidly as possible. It opened up, however, the 

 possibilities of the future. No one questions that 

 individual research, to contrast it with co-operative 

 research, must continue to break the paths of our 

 progress. Men of ideas and of initiative must con- 

 tinue to express themselves in their own way, or the 

 science would come to resemble field cultivation 

 rather than exploration. It is in this way that all 

 our previous progress has been made. The new 

 feature is that individual research will be increasingly 

 supplemented by co-operative research. There are 

 two situations in which co-operative research will 

 play an important r6le. 



The more important situation is the case of a 

 problem the solution of which obviously requires two 

 or more kinds of special technique. There are many 

 problems, for example, which a morphologist and a 

 physiologist should attack in co-operation, because 

 neither of them alone could solve it. Two de- 

 tached and unrelated papers would not meet the 

 situation. Our literature is burdened with too many 

 such contributions now. The one technique must be 

 a continual check on the other during the progress 

 of the investigation. This is a very simple illustra- 

 tion of what may be called team-work. It is simply 

 a practical application of our increasing realisation 

 of the fact that problems are often synthetic, and 

 therefore involve a synthetic attack. 



Another simple illustration may be suggested. If 

 taxonomists and geneticists should work now and 

 then in co-operation, the result might be either fewer 

 or more species, but, in any event, they would be 

 better species. The experience of botanists can sug- 

 gest many other useful couplings in the interest of 

 better results. In the old days some of you will recall 

 that we had investigations of soil bacteria unchecked 

 by any work in chemistry, and side by side w'ith this 

 were investigations in soil chemistry unchecked by 

 any work with soil bacteria. 



Perhaps the most conspicuous illustration of dis- 

 cordant conclusions through lack of co-operation, so 

 extreme that it may be called lack of co-ordination, 

 may be found in the fascinating and baffling field of 

 phylogeny. To assemble the whole plant kingdom, 

 or at least a part of it, in evolutionary sequence has 

 been the attempt of a considerable number of 

 botanists, and no one of them as yet has taken into 

 consideration even all the known facts. There is 

 the palasobotanist who rightly stresses historical suc- 

 cession, with which, of course, any evolutionary 

 sequence must be consistent, but cannot be sure 

 of his identifications, and still less of the essential 

 structures involved. History is desirable, but some 

 real knowledge of the actors who make history is even 

 more desirable. 



Then there is the morphologist, who stresses simi- 

 larity of structures, especially reproductive structures, 

 and leaves out of sight not only accompanying struc- 

 tures, but also historical succession. 



Latest in the field is the anatomist, especially the 

 vascular anatomist, who compares the vascular struc- 

 tures in their minutest detail, and loses sight of other 

 important factors in any evolutionary succession. 



Apparently no one as yet has taken all the results 

 from all fields of investigation and given us the result 

 of the combination. In other words, in phylogeny we 

 have had single-track minds. This has been necessary 

 for the accumulation of facts, but unfortunate in 

 reaching conclusions. 



This is but a picture of botanical investigations in 

 general as formerly conducted, and it seems obvious 

 that co-operative research will become increasingly 

 common as co-operation is found to be of advantage. 



NO. 2622, VOL. 104] 



The second situation in which co-operative research 

 will play an important rdle is less important than the 

 first, but none the less real. It must be obvious to 

 most of us that our literature is crowded with the 

 records of incompetent investigations. Not all who 

 develop a technique are able to be independent inves- 

 tigators. They belong to the card-catalogue class. 

 They are not even able to select a suitable problem. 

 We are too familiar with the dreary rehearsal of facts 

 that have been told many times, the only new thing, 

 perhaps, being the material used ; and even then the 

 result might have been foretold. It is unfortunate to 

 waste technique and energy in this way, and the only 

 way to utilise them is through co-operative research, 

 for which there has been a competent initiative, and 

 in the prosecution of which there has been a suitable 

 assignment of parts. In my judgment, this is the 

 only way in which we can conserve the technique we 

 are developing and make it count for something. I 

 grant that the product of such research is much like 

 the product of a factory, but we may need the product. 



In one way or another co-operative research will 

 supplement individual research. Individuals, as a 

 rule, will be the pioneers ; but all cannot be pioneers. 

 After exploration there comes cultivation, and much 

 cultivation will be accomplished by co-operation. 



(3) The most important feature that will be 

 developed in the botanical investigation of the future 

 is experimental control. Having recognised that 

 structures are not static, that programmes of develop- 

 ment are not fixed, and that responses are innumer- 

 able, we are no longer satisfied with the statement that 

 all sorts of variations in results occur. We must know 

 just what condition produced a given result. This 

 questioning as to causes of variable results first took 

 the form of deduction. We tried to reason the thing 

 out. 



A conspicuous illustration of this situation may be 

 obtained from the history of ecology. Concerned with 

 the relation of plants to their environment, deduc- 

 tions became almost as numerous as investigators. 

 Even when experimental vvork was begun, the results 

 were still vague because of environment. Finally, it 

 became evident that all the factors of environment 

 must be subjected to rigid experimental control before 

 definite conclusions could be reached. 



What is true of ecology is true also of every phase 

 of botanical research. For example, I happened to 

 be concerned with materials that showed an occasional 

 monocotyledonous embryo with two cotyledons, while 

 most of the embryos were normal. The fact, of 

 course, was important, for it connected up mono- 

 cotyledons and dicotyledons in a very suggestive way, 

 and also opened up the whole question of cotyledony. 

 Important as the fact was, much more important was 

 the cause of the fact. We could only infer that cer- 

 tain conditions might have resulted in a dicotyle- 

 donous embryo in a monocotyledon ; but it was a very 

 unsubstantial inference. That problem will never be 

 solved until we learn to control the conditions and 

 produce dicotyledonous embryos from monocotyle- 

 dons at will, or the reverse. Comparison and infer- 

 ence must be replaced by experimental control, just 

 as in the history of organic evolution the method 

 shifted from comparison and inference to experimental 

 control. It will be a slow evolution, and most of 

 our conclusions will continue to be inferences, but 

 these inferences will eventually be the basis of experi- 

 ment. In fact, most of our conclusions are as yet 

 marking time until a new technique enables us to 

 move forward. 



These illustrations from ecology and morphology 

 represent simple situations as compared with the 

 demands of cytology or genetics, but the same need 



