500 



SCIENCE 



[Vol. LV, No. 1428 



What miglit have happened to these dis- 

 coveries had they promised to emerge in an 

 atmosphere in which it was considered that 

 "much that has gone on in the name of re- 

 search is in truth only an imitation of re- 

 search," can only be surmised. Whether they 

 would have been made in the laboratories of 

 an institution where they stood a chance of 

 being regarded as "sins against good teaching" 

 so heinous as to demand expiation for a gen- 

 eration, may be doubted. Even if their worst 

 prospective reception had been that of being 

 regarded as slight additions to the discoverers' 

 own stock of information and not an increase 

 of the world's store of knowledge, their origin 

 could hardly have been inspiriting to their 

 author. One pauses to meditate upon the rea- 

 sons for the long delay in the appreciation of 

 the work of the Abbe Mendel in hybridization 

 of garden peas, and of that of Willard Gibbs 

 on the "phase rule," and to wonder whether 

 even then men in positions of influence were 

 convinced that they could "spot" in advance 

 those' things which were worth doing. 



It would be hazardous to assert that cases as 

 striking as the foregoing are common. Less 

 spectacular examples are, however, not rare. 

 Although many of the economically valuable 

 applications of science ■ to practical ends are 

 directly made by investigators who are con- 

 sciously striving to make those applications, it 

 is probably in every ease true that their suc- 

 cess has depended upon previous discoveries 

 not made with a practical aim in view. Some 

 one has gone so far as to say that every dis- 

 covery of science which has proven of economic 

 use was first made as a contribution to pure 

 science. 



Justification of research along lines that 

 promise no amelioration of man's condition 

 must not, however, lie only in the possibility 

 that the amelioration will result even without 

 the promise. Some investigations must be car- 

 ried on purely for the training of investigators. 

 Until, by use of tissue cultures or an analogous 

 procedure discovered by the pure scientist and 

 then applied by others, some means of indef- 

 initely prolonging life is discovered, new inves- 

 tigators must be developed to replace the old. 

 New investigators are developed only by prac- 



tice, and in practice they must solve problems. 

 For this educational work a problem of small 

 value often serves as well as a weightier one. 

 Indeed, since first attempts often show the 

 hand of the novice, it may be doing a real 

 service to science to withhold the more serious 

 problem for a second or later investigation. It 

 is not reasonable, therefore, and perhaps it is 

 not wise to insist that even the training of 

 research students shall all be done on subjects 

 that are in themselves of high value either 

 directly or indirectly. Objecting to our system 

 of traininig in research by means of small 

 investigations that are not in themselves im- 

 portant is like proposing to abandon the study 

 of arithmetic by means of problems on the 

 ground that no one ever bought seven gallons 

 of vinegar at twenty cents a quart, and that 

 therefore it is a waste of time to discover how 

 much the liquid cost. 



To convince ourselves that the rearing of 

 young investigators on a diet of insignificant 

 problems is not inevitably fat-al, and that it 

 may even be beneficial, it is only necessary to 

 look backward instead of forward, and gather 

 assurance concerning the future from what has 

 happened in the past. Did Pasteur, for exam- 

 ple, learn the art of investigation on a problem 

 that he foresaw was to be a lasting boon and 

 cause of untold happiness to men? This being 

 a presidential address, I will probably exhibit 

 no greater degree of ignorance than is to be 

 expected if I inquire whether the solution of a 

 puzzling problem relating to the isomeric tar- 

 taric acids was by any one at that time held to 

 be full of economic promise. Molecular struc- 

 ture we may regard to-day as of high im- 

 portance, perhaps in some instances even in a 

 practical way, but hardly in Pasteur's early 

 manhood. That his researches were considered 

 by his contemporaries futile, even from the 

 pure science viewpoint, is plain; for when 

 Pasteur's reputation had been established, 

 when he was professor of chemistry, even when 

 he was dean of his faculty, than which no 

 higher honor presumably could come to a man 

 of science, he was advised by Biot and Dumas, 

 veteran chemists, not to waste more time on 

 the subjects which were then uppermost in his 

 mind. These investigations led, however, 



