September 26, 1919] 



SCIENCE 



293 



done and redone every year for twenty 

 years to no avail and it will continue to be 

 done to no purpose until we get a reor- 

 ganization of the curriculum which makes 

 it possible for the same group of students 

 to get say three continuous years of science. 

 The General Science movement has unques- 

 tionably thus far been a step backward, 

 rather than a step forward, for it has in- 

 tensified the pellet-science evil instead of 

 eliminating it. It is acceptable to princi- 

 pals and superintendents simply because 

 the easy thing from an administrative 

 standpoint is to have no continuous courses 

 at all, and we have in recent years been 

 doing for the most part in our school or- 

 ganization the easy thing instead of the 

 pedagogically sound thing. There is then 

 a new opportunity and a tremendous one 

 for those of us who are connected with the 

 teaching and administration of science in 

 the high school. 



Second, there is a new opportunity for 

 the application of science to the industries, 

 for the war has demonstrated in the ways 

 which I have indicated, the effectiveness 

 of work of groups of well-trained scientific 

 men, and the leaders of our industries are 

 awakening to that fact, and they are now 

 forming such research groups. Three 

 large manufacturing establishments have 

 written to me within a month, saying that 

 they were starting departments of physical 

 research in connection with their indus- 

 try and they wanted highly competent 

 physicists to man those departments. The 

 Ph.D. in physics, if he is a man of ability, 

 is in demand to-day in the industries as he 

 has never been before. 



Third, there is a new opportunity for 

 the established scientists in the develop- 

 ment of the possibilities of cooperative re- 

 search among themselves. Most of the work 

 in science in the past has been done by the 

 individual, isolated experimenter. The 



war has demonstrated the immense advan- 

 tage of cooperation between research 

 groups even though they be in difEerent 

 countries, and the National Eesearch Coun- 

 cil is making vigorous efforts at the pres- 

 ent time to open up the possibilities of 

 cooperative research even of an interna- 

 tional kind. Under the stimulus of that 

 body there is being formed this week in 

 Brussels a new International Physical 

 Union, a new International Geophysical 

 Union, a new International Astronomical 

 Union, a new International Chemical 

 Union. In this country the Physical Sci- 

 ence Division of the National Research 

 Council has divided up the field of physical 

 research into twenty departments, has as- 

 signed a group to each department, and 

 has found a way by which we can try out 

 the possibilities of cooperative research in 

 physics, by getting most of the workers in 

 each field together once or twice a year for 

 the sake of comparing notes, analyzing the 

 whole situation, eliminating as far as may 

 be duplication, and starting new work on 

 fields that do not seem to be adequately 

 covered by work already under way, and 

 in general stimulating one another by mu- 

 tual contact. This, I take it, is one of the 

 great opportunities in science at the pres- 

 ent moment, and I anticipate great results 

 from the introduction of this method. 



Fourth, there is to-day a new opportu- 

 nity in science for the young American 

 who is facing the problem as to where his 

 life can be spent on the whole most effec- 

 tively. It is to be assumed that most men 

 are at bottom altruistic, that most men 

 seek to direct their lives into channels in 

 which they can make them most worth 

 while for the race. I should like to divide 

 all altruistic effort into three great classes : 



The first has to do with efforts toward 

 the improvement of the individual charac- 

 ters and lives of men. This is the field 



