50 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXVII. No. 680 



which represents his own particular corner 

 of science. 



We may regret the loss of many charm- 

 ing features which have been erased from 

 the landscape of science by all of this 

 minute specialization, of which no one can 

 foresee the end, but such a sentiment is 

 much the same and as unavailing as that 

 for the return of the days of the stage- 

 coach. The great instruments of progress 

 in modern life— steam and electricity in 

 the industries, subdivision of labor and in- 

 creasing specialization in science— are not 

 altogether lovely, but they are the condi- 

 tions of advancement in material prosperity 

 and natural knowledge. 



A necessary expression of the changed 

 conditions of modern science has been the 

 rapid formation of more and more highly 

 specialized societies, which, it must be ad- 

 mitted, meet the personal needs of many 

 individual workers more fully than a gen- 

 eral association, representative of all the 

 natural sciences, can possibly do. But the 

 horizon of a. man of science must indeed 

 be narrowly circumscribed, if he can not 

 look beyond what he conceives to be his 

 personal needs and the little plot of ground 

 which he cultivates to those necessities of 

 science as a whole which an organization 

 such as ours is designed to serve. The 

 common interests of science grow with its 

 expansion, and the more minute and spe- 

 cialized its subdivision, the greater the need 

 of an association representative of these 

 common interests — a central, national or- 

 ganization which shall keep to the front the 

 essential unity of all the sciences of nature 

 and of man, and the vital importance to 

 the welfare of the community of the exten- 

 sion and application of scientific knowledge 

 in all directions. 



In order to serve most efficiently these 

 common interests of science the central 

 organization requires from time to time 

 readjustment in details of plan and work- 



ing to changed conditions resulting from 

 the development of science and national 

 growth, but its underlying purpose remains 

 always the same. This purpose is so fun- 

 damentally important that its attainment 

 in the fullest measure possible by this asso- 

 ciation should secure the personal service, 

 the active interest and the zealous loyalty 

 of all scientific workers and lovers of sci- 

 ence in this country. The association be- 

 comes a living organism through the devo- 

 tion of its members to its interests and, 

 when fired by this breath of life, the 

 machinery of organization, otherwise inert, 

 is made a powerful instrument for the 

 advancement of science. Gratifying as has 

 been the growth of the association in recent 

 years in membership and usefulness, no one 

 will claim that it has taken fiill possession 

 of its rightfiil heritage. The membership 

 of the association should be doubled, yes 

 trebled, to secure needful additions to its 

 resources and influence. The time is near, 

 if it has not already arrived, when the asso- 

 ciation urgently needs a central office and 

 the services of an executive officer and sec- 

 retary sufficiently recompensed to enable 

 him to devote his main time, thought and 

 energies to the perfection of the organiza- 

 tion, to the extension of membership, to the 

 voluminous correspondence, to the arrange- 

 ments for the meetings and to other mani- 

 fold interests of the association. Famil- 

 iarity with the benefits which such an ar- 

 rangement has secured for the medical pro- 

 fession through the remarkably effective 

 reorganization within recent years of the 

 American Medical Association leads me to 

 place the first emphasis upon this direction 

 of improvement for the organization of 

 science. 



In speaking, as I have done, of modern 

 science as subdivided and specialized, in 

 order to indicate some of the problems re- 

 lating to the organization of this associa- 

 tion, there is danger of giving a false im- 



