278 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. LI. No. 1316 



under the govermnental auspices of the na- 

 tions recently at war, seem to furnish convinc- 

 ing argument against tihis view. When work- 

 ers have been paid for solving a specific prob- 

 lem that fits itseK into a general scheme of 

 scientific progress — whether payment has been 

 in money or in the approval of their contem- 

 poraries or in their own satisfaction in worthy 

 service — it appears that they have been able to 

 perform their separate parts of a broad plan 

 and that they have often accomplished the al- 

 most impossible. One prime reason for the 

 medieval methods followed by fundamental re- 

 search seems to be that significant money 

 rewards are not generally offered for this sort 

 of work and that popular approval still goes to 

 the guerilla rather than to the unit of an or- 

 ganization. The motive of worthy and con- 

 structive service to nation and race seems 

 often to be thrust into the background, except- 

 ing in so far as the " bias of happy exercise " 

 - — with the satisfaction of doing just what one 

 likes to do from day to day, unhampered by 

 previously made plans — ogives a person to feel 

 that his own activities must be greatly worthy 

 and outstandingly constructive. It seems, how- 

 ever, that all of us are strongly moved at 

 times by the idea of communal service; for 

 the most part we arc glad to consider ourselves 

 as doing our best to be worthy parts of a 

 worthy whole, and therein lies the substratum 

 out of which the morale of an army's research 

 division or of an industrial laboratory is or- 



The cooperative instinct is strong in most 

 scientists, as in other people, but the practical 

 lack of means whereby constructive coopera- 

 tion might be planned and arranged makes it 

 very difficult indeed for any single worker to 

 break away from medieval individualism in re- 

 search. To cooperate, it is necessary to find 

 several others with whom to plan and work 

 and with whom the detailed operations may 

 be divided and shared ; in short, to organize a 

 cooperation or to find one already organized. 

 If an individual feels the impulse for coopera- 

 tive service so strongly as to lead him to act, 

 he must first give up his actual investigations 

 for a time, imtil the needed organization may 



be created ; he does not generally find it in ex- 

 istence. He may approach his colleagues in 

 either of two ways, both of which are apt to 

 lead to bitter disappointment, as things are to- 

 day. First, he may seek workers who will join 

 with him in attacking a fundamental problem 

 already partly planned in his own mind. 

 "Without some money to expend on the work, 

 or some position to offer, he may be met with 

 the suspicion that his motives are ordinarily 

 selfish, that he desires someone else to " pull 

 his chestnuts from the fire." Second, he may 

 offer his services to those who have plans for 

 constructive research problems in mind, but 

 here also he may often be suspected of ulterior 

 motives of low-grade selfishness, and his offers 

 may be responded to by increased secretiveness, 

 so that he may not receive the encouragement 

 he sought. The whole idea of cooperation in 

 such things is so novel that to propose it with- 

 out money payment seems almost to argue an 

 idealism that verges toward insanity. And yet 

 the conception of cooperation among human 

 beings forms the central strand about which 

 has been braided the cable of most forms of 

 human faith. 



It appears that the democratic cooperation 

 that is obviously needed requires an organiza- 

 tion that shall not depend on the autocratic 

 leadership of some individual enthusiast, who 

 might soon get looked upon by his followers 

 as a "super-man" or as possessing some sort 

 of divine right (even though he himself might 

 lay no claim to such attributes) and against 

 whom opposition might grow ever stronger be- 

 cause of this very fact. A suitable motto for 

 the org-anization needed might be that of the 

 French republic, there being as much liberty 

 and equality as is possible with true fraternity 

 (which is cooperation). If such organizations 

 as are here suggested are to be formed they 

 should be cooperative from the very start and 

 should center around several individuals. 

 They should be democratic in nature. It 

 must be clearly understood that the original 

 group have merely tried to plan the work so 

 as to bring about the greatest advancement, 

 and that the original plan is but a temporary 

 scaffold, to be modified from time to time and 



