July 11, 1884. 



SCIENCE. 



35 



SPECIALIZATION IN SCIENTIFIC 

 STUDY. 



There once was a science called ' natural 

 philosophy, ' which, like some old synthetic 

 types of animals, held in itself all the learning 

 that applied to physical facts. By the beginning 

 of this century this science of natural things 

 had become divided into physics and natural 

 histoiy. These divisions have since spread, 

 like the divisions of a polyp community, until 

 now natural history has more than a dozen 

 named branches ; and in physics the divisions 

 are almost as numerous. There are now at 

 least thirty named and bounded sciences ; each 

 name designating a particularly limited field, 

 in which there are able men who work their 

 days out in labor that does not consider the 

 rest of nature as having any relation to their 

 work. 



This progressive division of labor follows a 

 natural law : and it is perhaps fit that science 

 should itself give a capital illustration of the 

 application of this law to forms of thought, as 

 well as to the more concrete things of the 

 world ; but it is an open question whether or 

 no it is advantageous to the best interests of 

 learning. There can be no question that the 

 search for truth of a certain quality is very 

 greatly helped by this principle of divided labor. 

 If a man wish to get the most measurable yield 

 out of the earth in any way, the best thing for 

 him is to stake off a very small claim, tie himself 

 down to it, fertilize it highly, till it incessantly, 

 and forget that there are blossoms or fruit be- 

 yond his particular patch ; for any moment of 

 consciousness of such impracticable things as 

 grow beyond his field is sure to find its expres- 

 sion when he comes to dig his crop, whether his 

 crop in the intellectual field be elements or 

 animals, stars or animalculae. The harvest of 

 things unknown is most easily won in this 

 kitchen-gardening way of work. 



The world needs, or fancies that it needs, this 

 kind of work ; and it is now of a mind to pay 

 more of its various rewards for the least bit of 

 special and peculiar knowledge than for the 

 widest command of varied learning. In a 

 thousand wa}-s it says to its students, not only 



as of old, " Study what you most affect." but, 

 "Effect that study altogether, know the least 

 thing that can be known as no one else knows 

 it, and leave the universe to look after itself." 

 This is the prescription of our time. We 

 are now proceeding on the unexpressed theory, 

 that, because no man can command the details 

 of all science, therefore he shall know only 

 that which he can know in the utmost detail. 

 We seem to be assuming, that, if many sepa- 

 rate men each know some bit of the knowable, 

 man in general will in a way know it all ; 

 that when, in another hundred years of this 

 specialization, we have science divided into a 

 thousand little hermit- cells, each tenanted by 

 an intellectual recluse, we shall have completed 

 our system of scientific culture. No one cau 

 be so blind to the true purposes of learning as 

 to accept this condition of things as the ideal 

 of scientific labor. It may be the order of 

 conquest, the shape in which the battle against 

 the unknown has to be fought ; but beyond it 

 must lie some broader disposition of scientific 

 life, — some order in which the treasures of 

 science, won by grim struggle in the wilder- 

 ness of things unknown, may yield their profit 

 to man. 



The questions may fairly be asked, whether 

 we have not already won enough knowledge 

 from nature for us to return, in part, to the older 

 and broader ideal of learning ; whether we may 

 not profitably turn away a part of the talent 

 and genius which go to the work of discovery 

 to the wider task of comprehension ; whether 

 we may not again set the life of a Humboldt 

 along with the life of a Pasteur, as equally fit 

 goals for the student of nature. 



Until we set about the system of general 

 culture in science, it will be nearly impossible 

 to have any proper use of its resources in edu- 

 cation. A sound theoiy of general culture in 

 science must be preceded by a careful discus- 

 sion of the mind-widening power of its several 

 lines of thought. This determination cannot 

 be made b}^ men versed onl}' in their own spe- 

 cialties : it must be made by many efforts to 

 determine by comparison what part of the sci- 

 ences have the most important power of mind- 



