FOURTH LECTURE. 



PALEONTOLOGY AS A MORPHOLOGICAL 

 DISCIPLINE. 



PROF. W. B. SCOTT. 

 (PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, PRINCETON, N.J.) 



THE day has forever gone by when any one mind, however 

 profound and comprehensive, can take all knowledge for its 

 province. Increase of knowledge, like advance of civilization, 

 necessarily brings with it a division of labor, and each of the 

 great branches of science becomes more and more minutely 

 divided and subdivided for the purposes of investigation. Such 

 subdivision greatly enhances the efficiency of the individual 

 worker, enabling him to concentrate his attention upon some 

 definite problem of more or less limited scope, and, so far, it is 

 advantageous. On the other hand, like most human devices, 

 it has its drawbacks, and what is gained in one direction is apt 

 to be lost in another. One great and growing evil is the sub- 

 division of knowledge which accompanies specialization of 

 research. The worker finds the greatest difficulty in keeping 

 abreast of all that is being accomplished by fellow laborers in 

 his own field ; how, then, shall he find time to learn anything 

 of the work in other fields ? Not to do so involves the penalty 

 of such a narrowness of view as will inevitably lessen the value 

 of his own work, because deductions drawn legitimately enough 

 from a single line of investigation often appear absurd when 

 tested by a wider range of facts. Many a blunder might be 

 avoided were the worker's vision not so strictly limited by the 

 boundaries of his own speciality. 



The narrowing effects of this subdivision of knowledge 

 result in a more or less marked loss of sympathy and mutual 



