INSTRUMENTS AND METHODS OF RESEARCH. 115 
for solid, thorough, and at the same time remarkably rapid, 
experimental achievements. And so we are having produced 
almost daily new specialties or new sub-specialties. 
W hat is the effect on the general broad-mindedness of 
Man by this extreme specialization, so necessary for the 
production of the best and most far-reaching results? Is the 
modem specialist 'more narrow-minded than the generalist 
of a century or two ago? In view of our opening statements 
that the prime instrument of research is, after all, the mind, 
the question is, as you see, not an irrelevant one. W r e find 
statements occasionally made which would imply an affirm- 
ative answer to our question ; but I, for one, would most 
emphatically protest against such an inference. I should 
maintain that the specialist, other things being equal, is 
likely to be a broader man than he who has no specialty, 
but simply a general knowledge of some particular science. 
The reason for my positive statement would be found in 
the fact mentioned, that the greatest part of the research 
work today is being done on the border-lands of the general 
sciences; for he who wishes to take part in this very active 
competition must needs be far better equipped than the mere 
generalist. The physical chemist, to he most successful, must 
have a very intimate knowledge of both physics and chemis- 
try, and the more mathematical skill he possesses the better. 
The astrophysicist must be a physicist, a chemist, a mathe- 
matician, besides being an astronomer. And so with regard 
to the geophysicist. 
Only a few names need be cited — like those, for example, 
of Faraday, Maxwell, Kelvin, von Helmholtz, Mascart — to 
support the contention that the broadest physicists are, as a 
rule, those who have regarded their laboratory experiments 
and deductions therefrom merely as a means to an end, not 
an end in themselves, and who have accordingly sought to 
apply the knowledge gained to the solution of some of the 
great problems affecting the general welfare of Man. There 
is the greatest need in this country of well-trained and well- 
equipped physicists in the solution of the many perplexing 
problems of the earth’s physics with regard to the phenomena 
