January 21, 1921] 



SCIENCE 



55 



zation. If the Greeks had coined a word 

 for organization — the nearest word, organo- 

 sis, seems not to appear till the twelfth 

 century — they would probahly have ap- 

 plied it to a second type of cases, in which 

 an agent organizes a complex as an engine 

 for accomplishing certain results. In this 

 sense Mr. Ford would be an organizer of 

 motor cars and in such a sense theologians 

 might speak of the Deity as organizing the 

 universe. This is organization imposed on 

 inorganic or at any rate alien materials. 

 At the present day the word is not used in 

 this sense, since the notion of life in the 

 materials to be organized seems to be so 

 essential. There is, however, a third type, 

 which is intermediate between the two pre- 

 ceding, one in which certain elements of a 

 living complex are permitted or delegated 

 or arrogate to themselves the right to 

 organize the remaining elements, as is seen 

 in innumerable human organizations from 

 a state, church or army to a band of rob- 

 bers. This type of organization, can often 

 be swiftly accomplished, especially if rein- 

 forced by the first type, but is necessarily 

 more or less of an artefact and prone to 

 easy and unexpected disintegration. "We 

 have this type in mind when we speak of 

 the organization of scientific research, or 

 investigation. It is evident, moreover, that 

 the organization of research up to the pres- 

 ent time has developed according to the 

 first type, through a natural division of 

 labor and inclination among investigators 

 and by means of such cooperative liaison 

 agencies as learned societies and publica- 

 tions. Even the most pe^imistic among 

 us must be lost in admiration at the results 

 thus accomplished during the past few 

 centuries. But the organizers feel that we 

 have been moving too slowly and have been 

 wasting too much time and effort — and 

 they also feel, apparently, that natural, or 

 organic organization of research, like that 



of the past, affords too little scope for the 

 expression of those instincts of self-asser- 

 tion and domination, which are so evi- 

 dently associated with the accumulation of 

 hormones in the older males of all mam- 

 msils. These hormones commonly produce 

 such an obfuseation of the intellect that 

 even our mature biologists seldom realize 

 that tiey are headed for the fate of the 

 old rogue elephants and bulls, which, when 

 they try to do too much organizing, are 

 promptly and unceremoniously butted out 

 of the herd by the youngsters. 



The phrase "organization of research" 

 is nonsense if vro take "research" in its 

 abstract sense, for an abstraction, of 

 course, is one of the things that can not be 

 organized. All we can mean by the term 

 is the organization of the actual processes 

 of research, or investigation, and since 

 these processes are essentially nothing but 

 the living, functioning investigators themi- 

 selves, organization of research can mean 

 only the organization of the investigators. 

 It would seem desiralble, therefore, before 

 attempting such organization to make a 

 behavioristic study of these creatures — 

 either to catch and closely observe a num- 

 ber of them or to steal on them unawares 

 while they are in the full ardor of research 

 — in other words to investigate the investi- 

 gators. Unfortunately no one has made 

 such a study, which should, of course, pre- 

 cede the making of a card catalogue of the 

 various species, subspecies, varieties, muta- 

 tions and aberrations of investigators and 

 the enumeration of their genes and chro- 

 mosomes. And as the investigatox's them- 

 selves seem to be so busy that they have no 

 time to scrutinize their own behavior, or 

 if they do, are either too proud or too bash- 

 ful to tell us what they find, I am com- 

 pelled, for the sake of my argument, to 

 attempt such a study and hence to make a 

 brief excursion into psychology. As this 



