74 Education through Nature 



ceeding, (c) in its final results. Thus it is often said 

 of Columbus that he was an adventurer, who merely 

 from idle curiosity, from a natural shiftless disposition, 

 for mere excitement, crossed the unknown waters of 

 the Atlantic, and thus, by accident, discovered a new 

 world such would be the discovery method. 



On the other hand, it is also claimed that Columbus 

 was a student of geography, astronomy, and naviga- 

 tion; that he had thus been made to believe the world 

 to be a sphere, and, consequently, formed the hypothe- 

 sis that, by sailing west, the eastern coast of Asia 

 could be reached. He directed his ships in the light 

 of that hypothesis, and found the new world. In the 

 latter case he employed the investigation method. 

 It makes us think of Coltlmbus as a scientific investi- 

 gator rather than as an adventurer. 



Investigation means the search for new truth by 

 the light of what is already known. Research, as 

 applied to advanced scientific work, means the investi- 

 gation of phenomena hitherto unknown to humanity; 

 or the attempt to solve those problems that have thus 

 far eluded solution. To do such work the student 

 must first appropriate the sum of human knowledge 

 in that particular department of knowledge; for it is 

 only on arriving at the borderland separating the 

 known from the unknown that valuable original re- 

 search can be done. Not the least of the task such a 

 student has before him is the understanding of the 

 problem, after the problem has been found; for it is 

 only by mere chance that the solution to a problem can 

 be found without knowing what that problem is. 



Work like this is, of course, the work for specialists, 

 and may, therefore, seem to have no bearing on methods 

 of nature study. But it may be that the conditions 

 for the gaining of new knowledge are the same for all 

 of us, and that methods, in nature study, cannot en- 

 tirely ignore the suggestions which advanced work 



