1909.] 



Anniversai'ij Address by Sir A. Geikie. 



157 



clone by the coiiversatiou and informal friendly discussions which then take 

 place. But when, at the end of the brief half hour, the ordinary weekly 

 meeting of the Society opens in the adjoining room, a singular contrast is 

 presented between the two companies. The tea-room continues to be a scene 

 of animated talk long after the bell has announced the commencement of 

 the meeting. If the papers to be read are biological, some of the biologists 

 will be found to adjourn with the President and officers into the meeting- 

 room to listen to the reading of these papers. But the physicists remain 

 for the most part outside. In like manner, on a day set apart for physical 

 questions, the biologists will show a similar predilection for prolonging the 

 amenities of the tea-table instead of hearing the papers read. In either 

 case, each time that the door between the two rooms is opened the loud hum 

 of conversation bursts into the meeting with a volume which for a few 

 moments may make the speaker inaudible. 



That there are some practical advantages in this separation of subjects 

 cannot be gainsaid, and I would not for a moment seek to undervalue them. 

 But I confess I am often led to consider this subject with feelings of regret 

 and misgiving, and to ask myself whether the conveniences afforded by the 

 subdivision are not more than compensated by the disadvantages that 

 accompany them. Undoubtedly, the constantly quickening pace of the 

 march of science makes it every year increasingly difficult for those whose 

 lives are devoted to the active and engrossing prosecution of research in one 

 special department of enquiry to keep in touch even with the broader 

 features of the advance that is being made in other departments. We 

 cannot be surprised that a man whose whole energies are absorbed in one 

 line of study should neither care to listen to, nor to burden his library 

 shelves with, papers in other lines, full of technicalities which he has had 

 no time to master, and written therefore in a language which to him is more 

 or less unintelligible. In this way the workers in widely separated fields 

 of enquiry tend to be more and more completely isolated from each other. 



But surely such isolation is a defect in our organisation which deserves 

 serious attention. It cannot be for the general good of scientific progress 

 that the eyes of an investigator should seldom or never be lifted from his 

 own field of work, nor his ears be open to the reports of the advances made 

 in other fields that lie outside of his immediate interests. The wider his 

 outlook, the greater must obviously be his capacity for judging of the general 

 bearings of discovery in his own domain on otlier departments of research, 

 and the broader and more intelligent will be his sympathies with the 

 whole range of activity on which the continued march of natural knowledge 

 depends. 



