630 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLII. No. 1088 



vision repay with overflowing measure all 

 the labor they have cost, for it is then that 

 the miracle is wrought and the eyes of 

 Peter BeU are opened. 



Permit me one more word. Science lays 

 her spell upon us because she lives and 

 moves. It ought to be clear that the ad- 

 vancement of knowledge is not less vital to 

 the educational interests of the university 

 than are its conservation and dissemi- 

 nation. Are we quite sure of ourselves in 

 this regard? We have heard of late an 

 intimation that the universities have not 

 been so much leaders of progress as "de- 

 positories of stationary thought." Well, 

 depositories of stationary thought the uni- 

 versities indubitably have been, like the 

 monasteries that they succeeded as centers 

 of learning; and they have thus served as 

 the guardians of a treasure that is beyond 

 all price. But this is only half the truth; 

 for it has long been one of our most cher- 

 ished ideals that universities should also be 

 the natural homes of original discovery and 

 productive scholarship. The real universi- 

 ties — and I believe that our own is one of 

 them — have demonstrated by their example 

 that the atmosphere which these things 

 create make teaching live and move. But 

 even as we are insisting upon this we find 

 ourselves wondering how our ideal is likely 

 to fare hereafter in the continual expansion 

 of modern universities and the multiplicity 

 of new demands upon their teaching re- 

 sources. Our pedagogical and executive 

 machinery is admirably organized. It has 

 developed a high degree of efficiency. Will 

 it be efficient enough in the future to main- 

 tain an atmosphere in which scientific re- 

 search and creative scholarship may freely 

 breathe ? It is easier to ask hard questions 

 than to answer them. This one, neverthe- 

 less, we shall not escape; for the day is 

 coming when the leadership of the univer- 

 sities in intellectual progress will depend 



on the reply that we and those after us 

 shall make; and not our words, but our 

 deeds will speak for us. 



Edmund B. Wilson 



Columbia University 



PLAIN WHITING-^ 



Two years ago I spoke to the American Min- 

 ing Congress on the subject "Plain Talk" — 

 both preaching the use of direct statement and 

 trying to practise what I preached. Of late my 

 thoughts have turned more and more to the 

 need of the use of popular language in stating 

 technical results; hence this afternoon I ven- 

 ture to discuss plain writing from the stand- 

 point of a government scientist. For twenty- 

 odd years my association with scientists has 

 been fairly intimate, and though I may not 

 qualify in plain writing myself, I can claim 

 large acquaintance with both the written and 

 the printed page whose meaning is far from 

 plain. 



At its best, science is simple; for science is 

 not much more than arranging facts so as to 

 set forth the truth. Scientific thought is exact 

 and direct, and scientific writing must there- 

 fore be accurate and to the point. The scien- 

 tist should think directly and with the preci- 

 sion of one of the instruments of his trade, 

 and above all his language must present that 

 thought exactly. 



In scientific writing this need of exact state- 

 ment has led to the use of special terms, words 

 that keep their razor-edge because used only 

 for hair-splitting distinctions. In a certain 

 degree this adoption of words not commonly 

 used is unavoidable and therefore defensible. 

 Yet the practise is carried to an extreme and 

 far too often the result is a highly specialized 

 language so distantly related to our mother 

 tongue that as a preliminary qualification the 

 writer has to pass a civil-service examination 

 and the reader usually finds himself " shut out " 

 and facing a " no admittance " sign unless he 

 happens to possess the degree of Doctor of 



1 Meeting of American Mining Congress, San 

 Francisco, September 13, 1915. 



