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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. LIV. No. 1401 



ature, or art, or religion is never debased by low 

 aims. 



Whatever else this war has brought forth, it 

 has at last taught the ignorant multitude that, 

 in our modern complex civilization, chemists 

 are as indispensable as engineers, notwithstand- 

 ing the fact that the lawyer-politician still 

 holds the floor. 



Nor should the public be blamed too much. 

 The work and purposes of the chemist are not 

 easy to understand to the average man or 

 woman, too often devoid of even rudimentary 

 scientific knowledge, although in some cases 

 they are the bearers of a college degree earned 

 by a one-sided exclusively literary education. 



What appears even less obvious, even to the 

 better informed classes, is the relation of the 

 chemist to the chemical engineer. It is less 

 known that a man may be a scientific star of 

 "the first magnitude and yet be incapable of 

 xitilizing his science in the industries, or of 

 applying it in the many other ramifications 

 of the economics of our civilization — not to 

 speak of the recent applications of science in 

 war. It does not seem obvious to many that 

 there is the same difference between a good 

 ■grammarian or philologist and a successful 

 writer, be the latter a novelist, an essayist, a 

 journalist or a playwright; that a learned 

 botanist will not necessarily make a success- 

 ful farmer, no more than a mathematician 

 will surely prove a good accountant, nor a 

 good accountant an able business man, nor 

 a philosopher a successful statesman. 



In the same way, explorers frequently make 

 unsuccessful settlers. The true scientist is an 

 explorer in the broadest sense of the word. He 

 explores the laws of nature. By direct observa- 

 tion or experiment, and aided by theoretical 

 reasoning, he tries to correlate the observed 

 facts until he believes that he is warranted to 

 generalize thereon. He thus helps to discover 

 new truths or laws of nature. These, in their 

 turn will permit him to predict facts in advance 

 until further observations or experiments either 

 support him or point out that his generaliza- 

 tions or theories were based on insufficient re- 

 search or faulty interpretation of the recorded 

 data. Whenever this occurs, he is compelled to 



turn back on his steps and gather additional 

 knowledge and try better theories. Thus are 

 the methods of science and research. But be- 

 fore any such laboriously gathered knowledge 

 can be utilized, there is a vast amount of 

 further methodic work to be performed. 



After a geologist has revealed and surveyed 

 a body of ore in the mountain, the mining engi- 

 neer and the metallurgist know very well that 

 this does not necessarily mean a paying mine, 

 or a successful smelting works. 



So if is in chemistry. The experience of 

 many a scientist has been confined exclusively 

 to laboratory work, or to purely chemical sub- 

 jects. This is frequently the reason of his weak- 

 ness in dealing with practical matters, when he 

 is inclined to concentrate his point of view too 

 much on only a part of the subject with which 

 he is confronted. He is apt to neglect other 

 considerations which although seemingly unim- 

 posing from a scientific standpoint, frequently 

 carry with them the very elements of success or 

 failure in practical applications. 



When, during the war, the problem came up 

 to start the manufacture of optical glass for 

 gunsights and other instruments used in our 

 army or navy, it was easy enough to take care 

 of the chemical side of this subject after raw 

 materials of sufficient purity had been obtained 

 and as long as the glass was produced merely 

 in quantities of a few ounces where the mass 

 could readily be melted in platinum crucibles. 

 But when it came to produce tons of homogene- 

 ous optical glass for real wholesale use, then the 

 most tantalizing problem resided in the proper 

 construction and handling of large clay cruci- 

 bles;' this for the simple fact that the molten 

 glass dissolved the clay of the pots and got 

 spoiled by taking up impurities, in the same 

 way as water would dissolve a container made 

 of sugar or of dried mud. 



Many a chemical reaction brilliantly success- 

 ful in the laboratory as long as the operation 

 could be limited to small quantities and carried 

 out in glass, porcelain or platinum vessels, has 

 been doomed to failure when attempts were 

 made to run it on a permanent commercial 

 scale. It needs quite some experience and a 

 good deal of common sense to know when it is 



