The excessive specialisation of modern science in the West has led to
the danger of losing sight of the fundamental fact that there can be but
one truth, one science which includes all the branches of knowledge. How
chaotic appear the happenings in Nature? Is nature a Cosmos! in which
the human mind is some day to realise the uniform march of sequence,
order and law? India through her habit of mind is peculiarly fitted to
realise the idea of unity, and to see in the phenomenal world an orderly
universe. This trend of thought led me unconsciously to the dividing
frontiers of different sciences and shaped the course of my work in its
constant alternations between the theoretical and the practical, from
the investigation of the inorganic world to that of organised life and
its multifarious activities of growth, of movement, and even of
sensation. On looking over a hundred and fifty different lines of
investigations carried on during the last twenty-three years, I now
discover in them a natural sequence. The study of Electric Waves led to
the devising of methods for the production of the shortest electric
waves known and these bridged over the gulf between visible and
invisible light; from this followed accurate investigation on the
optical properties of invisible waves, the determination of the
refractive powers of various opaque substances, the discovery of effect
of air film on total reflection and the polarising properties of
strained rocks and of electric tourmalines. The invention of a new type
of self-recovering electric receiver made of galena was the fore-runner
of application of crystal detectors for extending the range of wireless
signals. In physical chemistry the detection of molecular change in
matter under electric stimulation, led to a new theory of photographic
action. The fruitful theory of stereochemistry was strengthened by the
production of two kinds of artificial molecules, which like the two
kinds of sugar, rotated the polarised electric wave either to the right
or to the left. Again the 'fatigue' of my receivers led to the discovery
of universal sensitiveness inherent in matter as shown by its electric
response. It was next possible to study this response in its
modification under changing environment, of which its exaltation under
stimulants and its abolition under poisons are among the most
astonishing outward manifestations. And as a single example of the many
applications of this fruitful discovery, the characteristics of an
artificial retina gave a clue to the unexpected discovery of "binocular
alternation of vision" in man;--each eye thus supplements its fellow by
turns, instead of acting as a continuously yoked pair, as hitherto
believed.