January 12, 1917] 



SCIENCE 



33 



biology as furnishing an intelligent, scien- 

 tific viewpoint for their subsequent study of 

 medicine. Such a survey is not only good, 

 but very properly prescribed as necessary. 

 My remarks have been directed at a very 

 different level and type of intellectual 

 development from this ; we have been con- 

 sidering our own particular problems as 

 investigators. What I have been interested 

 in discrediting is the persistence of ideas 

 of machine-made education into the pro- 

 ductive years of scientific life ; the idea that 

 if we seek eventually to become effective we 

 should take care to perfect ourselves labori- 

 ously in each of the branches that have been 

 regarded as fundamental. There is a real 

 danger that we may spend our lives pre- 

 paring ourselves for an indefinite piece of 

 work that we never even start. It is, of 

 course, much easier to continue preparing 

 ourselves, to keep our scientific judgment 

 strictly symmetrical by endeavoring to fit 

 in each contribution that others make into 

 its proper place, rather than to insist that 

 one particular piece of work must be done 

 now and to the exclusion of everything else. 

 This insistence, however, I consider to be 

 the true raison d'etre of specialization, the 

 only basis of real productivity. 



These remarks, to repeat, are not a recom- 

 mendation for educational anarchy, but an 

 explanation of how a somewhat one-sided 

 development may not only not be incon- 

 sistent with, but indeed the very essence of 

 highest accomplishment. This is not so 

 much a recommended program as an ex- 

 planation of how things really work out. 

 It is intended to some extent as helping 

 to dispel the discouragement that I believe 

 has come to many of us when we cease to 

 be mere recipients of information and in a 

 position to think and to do for ourselves in 

 a chosen profession. I must confess to 

 many hours of doubt for more years than I 

 care to admit, as to whether I should really 



accomplish anything, owing to the fact that 

 I had failed to become a good chemist en 

 passant. It was always and increasingly 

 too late to turn back and repair the errors 

 or omissions of education, and as my prob- 

 lems finally gripped me instead of merely 

 inviting me, I silently gave up the struggle 

 to remodel my life. And in following some 

 of these problems in certain of their rami- 

 fications, I found that although I could 

 never hope to learn chemistry, I was curi- 

 ously enough collaborating in investiga- 

 tions that utilized that very type of chem- 

 istry which my work required. I was ab- 

 sorbing in this intimate way certain very 

 restricted forms of chemistry in the making. 



Out of such experience has gradually 

 formed a certain working philosophy, or, 

 better, a philosophy of work which I have 

 tried here to present to you. Those of you 

 with less limitations may well question 

 much that I have said, you may assert that 

 breadth does not of necessity mean super- 

 ficiality, and per contra, that digging a hole 

 does not necessarily mean that it is deep, 

 but in certain respects I am sure you will 

 agree with me. Specialization in science, 

 even in the narrowest sense, is essential to 

 real accomplishment. Any extension of 

 knowledge is dependent on an attentive 

 consideration of a relatively small group 

 of facts to the temporary exclusion of less 

 related facts. To a great extent the smaller 

 the group the greater the concentration 

 possible, and the greater the resultant ac- 

 complishment. Each science is independ- 

 ent in so far as the individual investigator 

 is concerned, and correlatively all sciences 

 can be learned with each specific scientific 

 problem as a point of departure, at least 

 so far as the needs of that problem demand. 

 On the solution of problems depends the fu- 

 ture of science. 



Predeeick p. Gat 



TJNivEBSirY OF California 



