December 25, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



909 



1820, partly as the result of the aceuimila- 

 tion of valuable observations too extensive 

 for the Eoyal Society to publish. Sir 

 Joseph, though he had himself aided in the 

 establishment of the Linnean Society, was 

 greatly perturbed at this further develop- 

 ment. A short time later he died in the 

 belief that the special societies had struck 

 a severe blow at the respectability and use- 

 fulness of the Eoyal Society, by robbing it 

 of many of its members and laying claim to 

 some of its most important departments.^ 

 But his fears were wholly unwarranted, 

 and the special societies continued to grow 

 and multiply, to the advantage of science 

 and of the Royal Society itself. Their ex- 

 tensive publications have not detracted from 

 the volume or the quality of the Philosoph- 

 ical Transactions and the Proceedings, and 

 each of these societies, by contributing to 

 the development of some special field, has 

 helped to build up that great organization 

 of British science of which the Royal Soci- 

 ety is the acknowledged and venerated head. 

 These details will not be out of place if 

 they help to emphasize a principle which 

 should always be respected in the work of 

 the National Academy. The societies and 

 journals which have been established to 

 meet the needs of scientific progress have 

 come to stay. It is neither necessary nor 

 in any way desirable to usurp their func- 

 tions, which are the result of a natural 

 process of evolution. There is ample room, 

 however, for academies devoted to the 

 whole range of science. The rapid advance 

 of research in a thousand ramifying fields 

 has left much intermediate territory un- 

 explored. The approach to these undevel- 

 oped regions may be made from more than 

 one direction, and through the aid of more 

 than one method. Thus nothing can be 



3 Bairow, ' ' Sketches of the Eoyal Society, ' ' 

 pp. 10, 256; Weld, "History of the Royal So- 

 ciety," pp. 242, 246. 



more stimulating to the progress of re- 

 search than an acquaintance with the in- 

 vestigations and processes which are con- 

 stantly being developed in fields other than 

 one's own. Mathematics has received its 

 principal impulses from astronomy and 

 physics. Physical chemistry is indebted, 

 on the one hand, to Pf effer the botanist for 

 the study of vegetable cells, and on the 

 other to the mathematical and physical in- 

 vestigations of Willard Gibbs, Van der 

 Waals and Arrhenius. Astrophysics came 

 into existence through the use in astronomy 

 of the spectroscope and other physical in- 

 struments. Every department of science 

 sheds a luster which should illuminate, not 

 only its particular territories, but others, 

 near and far, occupied by other workers. 

 The importance of recognizing and utiliz- 

 ing this fact must therefore increase as time 

 goes on. 



[It has been truly said that an academy 

 can hope to accomplish large results only 

 as it succeeds in meeting the conditions of 

 the present rather than those of the past. 

 What are existing conditions in science? 

 Surely none is more striking than the con- 

 traction of the field of the average inves- 

 tigator. Specialization is inevitable in the 

 maze of modem progress, and the narrow- 

 ing effect of constant devotion to a single 

 subject must become still more apparent 

 as science ramifies further. A general 

 academy, by insisting on the importance of 

 large relationships, by demonstrating the 

 unity of knowledge, by recognizing the fact 

 that fundamental methods of research, 

 wherever developed, are likely to be appli- 

 cable in more than one department, can do 

 much to broaden and to stimulate its mem- 

 bers. The correlation of research should 

 be counted as one of its prime objects, and 

 its energies should be largely directed to 

 this important end.] 



We are thus led to the conclusion that 



