PREFACE V 



that our science is a young one. Many of us in the pre-war gen- 

 eration of oceanographers felt completely outdated by the better- 

 educated, brighter-eyed, and sharper-minded members of the new 

 post-war generation. But we were proud to find how full our 

 science is of uninhibited young people, full of new men with new 

 ideas and new skills for attacking and solving the problems of 

 the sea. 



In my opening address to the Congress, I had the temerity to 

 offer these young people three pieces of advice: (1) to ask questions 

 of the ocean; (2) to think no small thoughts about their work; 

 (3) to fan the flames of controversy. 



Every science worthy of the name progresses, once it has passed 

 the pioneering stage, by asking the right questions of nature. 

 Indeed, ninety per cent of a scientific result has been achieved 

 when an answerable question has been properly formulated. In 

 the past we oceanographers have known so little about the oceans 

 that we have had to depend pretty largely on blind exploration 

 and random discovery. But I am convinced that we have now 

 grown up intellectually — grown up to the point where the next 

 great steps ahead will come from deliberate attempts to answer 

 properly formulated questions and to test carefully conceived 

 hypotheses. Much progress will come, especially in biology, from 

 controlled experiments in the laboratory. But for many problems 

 the sea itself must be used as a laboratory, and even though we 

 cannot make a controlled experiment in the oceans we should be 

 able, by carefully choosing the right conditions, to answer well- 

 thought-out questions. An example is one of the problems to be 

 attacked by the series of expeditions to the Indian Ocean proposed 

 by the Special Committee on Oceanic Research — the problem of 

 the magnitude and time scale of the changes in wind-driven 

 currents brought about by changing winds. The Indian Ocean, 

 with its two wind systems alternating seasonally, would appear to 

 be an ideal laboratory to study this problem 



Although our science is a small one, and our ocean is only a film 

 of water on a small planet, yet we should not be too modest about 

 what we are doing. The marine sciences are concerned with some 

 of the most profound questions of mankind, questions that men 



