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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. L. No. 1286 



constitution, can make us true " companions 

 in zealous research." But beware lest you be- 

 come so zealous as to forget that theses must 

 be typewritten in a perfectly definite manner 

 in order to be acceptable. 



As to procedure in discovering- what we call 

 truth, I wish to describe two opposing meth- 

 ods, overdrawing the point at first in order to 

 make the notion clear. 



We may decide to investigate some problem 

 that has been called to our attention and may 

 start out to collect all the ideas of previous 

 workers on the subject, to study completely all 

 the facts which others have collected and to 

 study also their attempts at explanation. 

 Then follows a critical analysis of the facts 

 and ideas to see if they are satisfactory and if 

 not satisfactory the lines along which further 

 evidence is desired. Then we proceed to the 

 investigation of those points which seem to us 

 to be necessary for completing the ideas dis- 

 closed in the literature of the subject. This 

 method is one generally taught to young in- 

 vestigators but it has certain defects which 

 are not so generally recognized. It puts the 

 investigator in the position of patching up a 

 structure that some one else has built. Noth- 

 ing is more certain than that in building up a 

 system by which to explain phenomena we at 

 once focus our attention upon certain phases 

 of those phenomena to the exclusion of others. 

 Following this procedure a student of human 

 embryology a hundred and fifty years ago, 

 studying carefully what others had written on 

 the subject, would have had his mind focused 

 on the attempt to see in the egg or sperma- 

 tozoon the miniature individual with all the 

 mature parts in proper proportion ; for accord- 

 ing to the view then prevailing either the eg'g 

 or the spermatozoon must contain such a 

 miniature man. The chances are that he 

 would believe that the problem to be solved 

 is, whether the miniature man is in one or the 

 other, and judging by the experience we have 

 in our beginning biology classes he would have 

 seen it. We have some marvelous figures in 

 the "publications of the seventeenth and eigh- 

 teenth centuries of miniature men all nicely 

 coiled up in the head of the spermatozoon and 



on the basis of such a figure who could be- 

 lieve that the egg is other than a medium for 

 the proper nourishment and protection of the 

 unfolding man. Especially was this likely to 

 be the case in an age when all things feminine 

 were considered inferior to things masculine. 

 But even in those days there were feminists, 

 for one group of investigators held that the 

 miniature man was in the ovum and that the 

 spermatozoon merely filled the compartively 

 miimportant role of a stimulating agent which 

 started the unfolding process of the ovum. 



One danger then in this procedure is that it 

 concentrates our attention upon certain phases 

 of phenomena and upon certain ideas concern- 

 ing them. Even the procedure of definition 

 of terms, while. necessary for progress in sci- 

 ence has the very evil effect of concentrating 

 the attention upon certain features of a proc- 

 ess to the exclusion of others. 



It has become the custom in certain grad- 

 uate schools to put the student through a pre- 

 liminary training for research on the theory 

 that he ought to obtain a certain familiarity 

 with the ideas of others before he begins to 

 have any of his own. He is supposed to be 

 unfit for any original investigation until he 

 has had his fill of the prevailing explanations. 

 I am inclined to object very strenuously to 

 this program. To my mind it is all important 

 that the personal relation between the investi- 

 gator and the phenomena he is to study should 

 remain unbroken. There should be allowance 

 in any program of study for some fraction of 

 the time when there may be companionship 

 between the investigator and the phenomena 

 of nature without the presence of a chaperon. 

 It is not at the beginning of an investigation 

 that a person heeds to know everything that 

 has been thought by others concerning the 

 problem. Of course, it is all important that 

 before imposing his ideas upon the world he 

 should have tested them fully by comparison 

 with all that others have done. It is to the 

 neglect of the factor of personal reaction that 

 we owe so much of the dead timber among 

 would-be investigators. It is for this reason 

 that we so rarely tap the fires of enthusiashi, 

 that we do not imloose the reserves of energy. 



