122 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. LI. No. 1310 



disintegrate, and in this way may lead to re- 

 placements at various points and to reenforce- 

 mient of the very foundations. 

 ' In putting up a building, such work is 

 found to delay completion of the enterprise to 

 a surprising extent after it seems to the casual 

 observer to be about finished. Those who do 

 it usually derive their satisfaction as work- 

 men from knowing that they are accomplish- 

 ing something necessary but which ought al- 

 ways to have been left as they leave it ; or their 

 esthetic sense is gratified in the pleasing finish 

 that they give to what they found strong and 

 serviceable but raw; or they know that they 

 are safeguarding the completed structure 

 against the inroads of time: but they do mot 

 see it really grow under their hands. 



If we understand science to be systematized 

 and formulated knowledge, we may be par- 

 doned for stopping to wonder whether some- 

 times we may not fail fully to grasp the mean- 

 ing conveyed by these words. Knowledge in a 

 particular field may appear to be systematized 

 and formulated in itself while it lacks com- 

 parable incorporation into the knowledge of 

 other things. It may appear ideally dissoci- 

 ated from useful application: but perhaps it 

 never is so in reality. Segregation of the arts 

 which apply science in the practical affairs of 

 life, perhaps does not really remove the neces- 

 sity of considering aH of these applications in 

 the classification and formulation of that 

 knowledge which science claims as its peculiar 

 field. 



The edict of an emperor, the injunction of a 

 priest, the counsel of father to son, in the far- 

 off days when civilization was establishing 

 itseK on the Tigris and the Ganges or in 

 China, fails to come within our definition of 

 science. We call such instruction empirical 

 rules. But in doing so we can not fail to rec- 

 ognize that before Aristotle philosophized on 

 the phenomena of life and Theophrastus for- 

 mulated what he knew of plants — which we 

 call the beginning of the science of botany, 

 men had acquired knowledge in our special 

 field and had classified it obviously to the ex- 

 tent of rejection of what they could not use 

 and of selection of what they made the basis 



of an agricultural practise which may have 

 been crude and inefficient as measiu'ed by the 

 standards of to-day, but which was adequate 

 to their needs and appears very refined in 

 comparison with the earlier dependence for 

 food upon the chase — either on land or water, 

 or gleanings of roots and fruits from the 

 plain, the mountain-side, or the forest. One 

 hesitates, even, to think of these still more 

 primitive practises as carried on independ- 

 ently of a very large amount of knowledge 

 gathered and sifted and winnowed through 

 many preceding generations as men worked 

 their way toward an empirical precursor of 

 what we now agree to call science. 



When Liefbig, the chemist, disposed of the 

 humus theory of nutrition of ordinary plants 

 he is considered to have been making a contri- 

 bution to the science of botany. When Gil- 

 bert and Lawes in the field, and Winogradsky 

 in the laboratory, put the completing link into 

 the chain of the circulation of nitrogen as an 

 active element, they are considered to have 

 been making the same kind of contribution to 

 the same science. I am wondering if my late 

 and lamented' associate Cyril Hopkins, calling 

 himself an agronomist, has been far from the 

 same field of science in teaching farmers in the 

 great corn region of the world how to maintain 

 for their children and their children's children 

 a soil fertility that the first generation of 

 white settlers imperiled, and if the last service 

 of his life — carrying his message to those who 

 now farm the worn-out lands of the Hellespont 

 — ^must be excluded from the recognition that 

 we accord to the achievements of science. If 

 in considering its achievements I chance now 

 and then to wander too far from standardized 

 or forming definitions of our particular sci- 

 ence, I trust that the lapses may be excused as 

 evidence of unclear vision rather than wilful 

 disregard of established boundaries. 



The superstructure of botany, broadly de- 

 fined, looks much the same to the casual ob- 

 server as it did twenty-five years ago. It has 

 been made more finished in parts, windows 

 have been put in where there were blank walls, 

 some parts have been pointed up or rebuilt, 

 perhaps the gables have begun to take form 



