forcibly urged than in Professor Ray Lankester's recent Romanes Lecture
before the University of Oxford. Man is here eloquently pictured as
Nature's rebel, who, under conditions where his great superior commands
"Thou shalt die," replies "I will live." In pursuance of this
determination, civilized man has proceeded so far in his interference
with the regular course of Nature that he must either go on and acquire
firmer control of the conditions, or perish miserably by the vengeance
certain to be inflicted on the half-hearted meddler in great affairs.
This rebel by every step forward renders himself liable to greater and
greater penalties, and so cannot afford to pause or fail in one single
step. One of Nature's most powerful agencies in thwarting his
determination to live is found in disease-producing parasites. "Where
there is one man of first-rate intelligence now employed in gaining
knowledge of this agency, there should be a thousand. It should be as
much the purpose of civilized nations to protect their citizens in this
respect as it is to provide defence against human aggression."
It was no part of the function of the lecturer to devise a plan for
carrying on the great war he proposes to wage. The object of the
present article is to contribute some suggestions in this direction;
with especial reference to conditions in our own country; and no better
text can be found for a discourse on the subject than the preceding
quotation. In saying that there should be a thousand investigators of
disease where there is now one, I believe that Professor Lankester
would be the first to admit that this statement was that of an ideal to
be aimed at, rather than of an end to be practically reached. Every
careful thinker will agree that to gather a body of men, young or old,
supply them with laboratories and microscopes, and tell them to
investigate disease, would be much like sending out an army without
trained leaders to invade an enemy's country.
There is at least one condition of success in this line which is better
fulfilled in our own country than in any other; and that is liberality
of support on the part of munificent citizens desirous of so employing
their wealth as to promote the public good. Combining this
instrumentality with the general public spirit of our people, it must
be admitted that, with all the disadvantages under which scientific
research among us has hitherto labored, there is still no country to
which we can look more hopefully than to our own as the field in which
the ideal set forth by Professor Lankester is to be pursued. Some
thoughts on the question how scientific research may be most
effectively promoted in our own country through organized effort may
therefore be of interest. Our first step will be to inquire what
general lessons are to be learned from the experience of the past.
The first and most important of these lessons is that research has
never reached its highest development except at centres where bodies of
men engaged in it have been brought together, and stimulated to action
by mutual sympathy and support. We must call to mind that, although the
beginnings of modern science were laid by such men as Copernicus,
Galileo, Leonardo da Vinci, and Torricelli, before the middle of the
seventeenth century, unbroken activity and progress date from the
foundations of the Academy of Sciences of Paris and the Royal Society
of London at that time. The historic fact that the bringing of men
together, and their support by an intelligent and interested community,
is the first requirement to be kept in view can easily be explained.
Effective research involves so intricate a network of problems and
considerations that no one engaged in it can fail to profit by the
suggestions of kindred spirits, even if less acquainted with the
subject than he is himself. Intelligent discussion suggests new ideas
and continually carries the mind to a higher level of thought. We must
not regard the typical scientific worker, even of the highest class, as
one who, having chosen his special field and met with success in
cultivating it, has only to be supplied with the facilities he may be
supposed to need in order to continue his work in the most efficient
way. What we have to deal with is not a fixed and permanent body of
learned men, each knowing all about the field of work in which he is
engaged, but a changing and growing class, constantly recruited by
beginners at the bottom of the scale, and constantly depleted by the
old dropping away at the top. No view of the subject is complete which
does not embrace the entire activity of the investigator, from the tyro
to the leader. The leader himself, unless engaged in the prosecution of
some narrow specialty, can rarely be so completely acquainted with his
field as not to need information from others. Without this, he is
constantly liable to be repeating what has already been better done
than he can do it himself, of following lines which are known to lead
to no result, and of adopting methods shown by the experience of others
not to be the best. Even the books and published researches to which he
must have access may be so voluminous that he cannot find time to
completely examine them for himself; or they may be inaccessible. All
this will make it clear that, with an occasional exception, the best
results of research are not to be expected except at centres where
large bodies of men are brought into close personal contact.
In addition to the power and facility acquired by frequent discussion
with his fellows, the appreciation and support of an intelligent
community, to whom the investigator may, from time to time, make known
his thoughts and the results of his work, add a most effective
stimulus. The greater the number of men of like minds that can be
brought together and the larger the community which interests itself in
what they are doing, the more rapid will be the advance and the more
effective the work carried on. It is thus that London, with its
munificently supported institutions, and Paris and Berlin, with their
bodies of investigators supported either by the government or by
various foundations, have been for more than three centuries the great
centres where we find scientific activity most active and most
effective. Looking at this undoubted fact, which has asserted itself
through so long a period, and which asserts itself today more strongly
than ever, the writer conceives that there can be no question as to one
proposition. If we aim at the single object of promoting the advance of
knowledge in the most effective way, and making our own country the
leading one in research, our efforts should be directed towards
bringing together as many scientific workers as possible at a single
centre, where they can profit in the highest degree by mutual help,
support, and sympathy.
In thus strongly setting forth what must seem an indisputable
conclusion, the writer does not deny that there are drawbacks to such a
policy, as there are to every policy that can be devised aiming at a
good result. Nature offers to society no good that she does not
accompany by a greater or less measure of evil The only question is
whether the good outweighs the evil. In the present case, the seeming
evil, whether real or not, is that of centralization. A policy tending
in this direction is held to be contrary to the best interests of
science in quarters entitled to so much respect that we must inquire
into the soundness of the objection.
It would be idle to discuss so extreme a question as whether we shall
take all the best scientific investigators of our country from their
several seats of learning and attract them to some one point. We know
that this cannot be done, even were it granted that success would be
productive of great results. The most that can be done is to choose
some existing centre of learning, population, wealth, and influence,
and do what we can to foster the growth of science at that centre by
attracting thither the greatest possible number of scientific
investigators, especially of the younger class, and making it possible
for them to pursue their researches in the most effective way. This
policy would not result in the slightest harm to any institution or
community situated elsewhere. It would not be even like building up a
university to outrank all the others of our country; because the
functions of the new institution, if such should be founded, would in
its relations to the country be radically different from those of a
university. Its primary object would not be the education of youth, but
the increase of knowledge. So far as the interests of any community or
of the world at large are concerned, it is quite indifferent where
knowledge may be acquired, because, when once acquired and made public,
it is free to the world. The drawbacks suffered by other centres would
be no greater than those suffered by our Western cities, because all
the great departments of the government are situated at a single
distant point. Strong arguments could doubtless be made for locating
some of these departments in the Far West, in the Mississippi Valley,
or in various cities of the Atlantic coast; but every one knows that
any local advantages thus gained would be of no importance compared
with the loss of that administrative efficiency which is essential to
the whole country.
There is, therefore, no real danger from centralization. The actual
danger is rather in the opposite direction; that the sentiment against
concentrating research will prove to operate too strongly. There is a
feeling that it is rather better to leave every investigator where he
chances to be at the moment, a feeling which sometimes finds expression
in the apothegm that we cannot transplant a genius. That such a
proposition should find acceptance affords a striking example of the
readiness of men to accept a euphonious phrase without inquiring
whether the facts support the doctrine which it enunciates. The fact is
that many, perhaps the majority, of the great scientific investigators
of this and of former times have done their best work through being
transplanted. As soon as the enlightened monarchs of Europe felt the
importance of making their capitals great centres of learning, they
began to invite eminent men of other countries to their own. Lagrange
was an Italian transplanted to Paris, as a member of the Academy of
Sciences, after he had shown his powers in his native country. His
great contemporary, Euler, was a Swiss, transplanted first to St.
Petersburg, then invited by Frederick the Great to become a member of
the Berlin Academy, then again attracted to St. Petersburg. Huyghens
was transplanted from his native country to Paris. Agassiz was an
exotic, brought among us from Switzerland, whose activity during the
generation he passed among us was as great and effective as at any time
of his life. On the Continent, outside of France, the most eminent
professors in the universities have been and still are brought from
distant points. So numerous are the cases of which these are examples
that it would be more in accord with the facts to claim that it is only
by transplanting a genius that we stimulate him to his best work.
Having shown that the best results can be expected only by bringing
into contact as many scientific investigators as possible, the next
question which arises is that of their relations to one another. It may
be asked whether we shall aim at individualism or collectivism. Shall
our ideal be an organized system of directors, professors, associates,
assistants, fellows; or shall it be a collection of individual workers,
each pursuing his own task in the way he deems best, untrammelled by
authority?
The reply to this question is that there is in this special case no
antagonism between the two ideas. The most effective organization will
aim both at the promotion of individual effort, and at subordination
and co-operation. It would be a serious error to formulate any general
rule by which all cases should be governed. The experience of the past
should be our guide, so far as it applies to present and future
conditions; but in availing ourselves of it we must remember that
conditions are constantly changing, and must adapt our policy to the
problems of the future. In doing this, we shall find that different
fields of research require very different policies as regards
co-operation and subordination. It will be profitable to point out
those special differences, because we shall thereby gain a more
luminous insight into the problems which now confront the scientific
investigator, and better appreciate their variety, and the necessity of
different methods of dealing with them.
At one extreme, we have the field of normative science, work in which
is of necessity that of the individual mind alone. This embraces pure
mathematics and the methods of science in their widest range. The
common interests of science require that these methods shall be worked
out and formulated for the guidance of investigators generally, and
this work is necessarily that of the individual brain.
At the other extreme, we have the great and growing body of sciences of
observation. Through the whole nineteenth century, to say nothing of
previous centuries, organizations, and even individuals, have been
engaged in recording the innumerable phases of the course of nature,
hoping to accumulate material that posterity shall be able to utilize
for its benefit. We have observations astronomical, meteorological,
magnetic, and social, accumulating in constantly increasing volume, the
mass of which is so unmanageable with our present organizations that
the question might well arise whether almost the whole of it will not
have to be consigned to oblivion. Such a conclusion should not be
entertained until we have made a vigorous effort to find what pure
metal of value can be extracted from the mass of ore. To do this
requires the co-operation of minds of various orders, quite akin in
their relations to those necessary in a mine or great manufacturing
establishment. Laborers whose duties are in a large measure matters of
routine must be guided by the skill of a class higher in quality and
smaller in number than their own, and these again by the technical
knowledge of leaders in research. Between these extremes we have a
great variety of systems of co-operation.
There is another feature of modern research the apprehension of which
is necessary to the completeness of our view. A cursory survey of the
field of science conveys the impression that it embraces only a
constantly increasing number of disconnected specialties, in which each
cultivator knows little or nothing of what is being done by others.
Measured by its bulk, the published mass of scientific research is
increasing in a more than geometrical ratio. Not only do the
publications of nearly every scientific society increase in number and
volume, but new and vigorous societies are constantly organized to add
to the sum total. The stately quartos issued from the presses of the
leading academies of Europe are, in most cases, to be counted by
hundreds. The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society already
number about two hundred volumes, and the time when the Memoirs of the
French Academy of Sciences shall reach the thousand mark does not
belong to the very remote future. Besides such large volumes, these and
other societies publish smaller ones in a constantly growing number. In
addition to the publications of learned societies, there are journals
devoted to each scientific specialty, which seem to propagate their
species by subdivision in much the same way as some of the lower orders
of animal life. Every new publication of the kind is suggested by the
wants of a body of specialists, who require a new medium for their
researches and communications. The time has already come when we cannot
assume that any specialist is acquainted with all that is being done
even in his own line. To keep the run of this may well be beyond his
own powers; more he can rarely attempt.
What is the science of the future to do when this huge mass outgrows
the space that can be found for it in the libraries, and what are we to
say of the value of it all? Are all these scientific researches to be
classed as really valuable contributions to knowledge, or have we only
a pile in which nuggets of gold are here and there to be sought for?
One encouraging answer to such a question is that, taking the interests
of the world as a whole, scientific investigation has paid for itself
in benefits to humanity a thousand times over, and that all that is
known to-day is but an insignificant fraction of what Nature has to
show us. Apart from this, another feature of the science of our time
demands attention. While we cannot hope that the multiplication of
specialties will cease, we find that upon the process of
differentiation and subdivision is now being superposed a form of
evolution, tending towards the general unity of all the sciences, of
which some examples may be pointed out.
Biological science, which a generation ago was supposed to be at the
antipodes of exact science, is becoming more and more exact, and is
cultivated by methods which are developed and taught by mathematicians.
Psychophysics--the study of the operations of the mind by physical
apparatus of the same general nature as that used by the chemist and
physicist--is now an established branch of research. A natural science
which, if any comparisons are possible, may outweigh all others in
importance to the race, is the rising one of "eugenics,"--the
improvement of the human race by controlling the production of its
offspring. No better example of the drawbacks which our country suffers
as a seat of science can be given than the fact that the beginning of
such a science has been possible only at the seat of a larger body of
cultivated men than our land has yet been able to bring together.
Generations may elapse before the seed sown by Mr. Francis Galton, from
which grew the Eugenic Society, shall bear full fruit in the adoption
of those individual efforts and social regulations necessary to the
propagation of sound and healthy offspring on the part of the human
family. But when this comes about, then indeed will Professor
Lankester's "rebel against Nature" find his independence acknowledged
by the hitherto merciless despot that has decreed punishment for his
treason.
This new branch of science from which so much may be expected is the
offshoot of another, the rapid growth of which illustrates the rapid
invasion of the most important fields of thought by the methods of
exact science. It is only a few years since it was remarked of
Professor Karl Pearson's mathematical investigations into the laws of
heredity, and the biological questions associated with these laws, that
he was working almost alone, because the biologists did not understand
his mathematics, while the mathematicians were not interested in his
biology. Had he not lived at a great centre of active thought, within
the sphere of influence of the two great universities of England, it is
quite likely that this condition of isolation would have been his to
the end. But, one by one, men were found possessing the skill and
interest in the subject necessary to unite in his work, which now has
not only a journal of its own, but is growing in a way which, though
slow, has all the marks of healthy progress towards an end the
importance of which has scarcely dawned upon the public mind.
Admitting that an organized association of investigators is of the
first necessity to secure the best results in the scientific work of
the future, we meet the question of the conditions and auspices under
which they are to be brought together. The first thought to strike us
at this point may well be that we have, in our great universities,
organizations which include most of the leading men now engaged in
scientific research, whose personnel and facilities we should utilize.
Admitting, as we all do, that there are already too many universities,
and that better work would be done by a consolidation of the smaller
ones, a natural conclusion is that the end in view will be best reached
through existing organizations. But it would be a great mistake to jump
at this conclusion without a careful study of the conditions. The brief
argument--there are already too many institutions--instead of having
more we should strengthen those we have--should not be accepted without
examination. Had it been accepted thirty years ago, there are at least
two great American universities of to-day which would not have come
into being, the means devoted to their support having been divided
among others. These are the Johns Hopkins and the University of
Chicago. What would have been gained by applying the argument in these
cases? The advantage would have been that, instead of 146 so-called
universities which appear to-day in the Annual Report of the Bureau of
Education, we should have had only 144. The work of these 144 would
have been strengthened by an addition, to their resources, represented
by the endowments of Baltimore and Chicago, and sufficient to add
perhaps one professor to the staff of each. Would the result have been
better than it actually has been? Have we not gained anything by
allowing the argument to be forgotten in the cases of these two
institutions? I do not believe that any who carefully look at the
subject will hesitate in answering this question in the affirmative.
The essential point is that the Johns Hopkins University did not merely
add one to an already overcrowded list, but that it undertook a mission
which none of the others was then adequately carrying out. If it did
not plant the university idea in American soil, it at least gave it an
impetus which has now made it the dominant one in the higher education
of almost every state.
The question whether the country at large would have reaped a greater
benefit, had the professors of the University of Chicago, with the
appliances they now command, been distributed among fifty or a hundred
institutions in every quarter of the land, than it has actually reaped
from that university, is one which answers itself. Our two youngest
universities have attained success, not because two have thus been
added to the number of American institutions of learning, but because
they had a special mission, required by the advance of the age, for
which existing institutions were inadequate.
The conclusion to which these considerations lead is simple. No new
institution is needed to pursue work on traditional lines, guided by
traditional ideas. But, if a new idea is to be vigorously prosecuted,
then a young and vigorous institution, specially organized to put the
idea into effect, is necessary. The project of building up in our
midst, at the most appropriate point, an organization of leading
scientific investigators, for the single purpose of giving a new
impetus to American science and, if possible, elevating the thought of
the country and of the world to a higher plane, involves a new idea,
which can best be realized by an institution organized for the special
purpose. While this purpose is quite in line with that of the leading
universities, it goes too far beyond them to admit of its complete
attainment through their instrumentality. The first object of a
university is the training of the growing individual for the highest
duties of life. Additions to the mass of knowledge have not been its
principal function, nor even an important function in our own country,
until a recent time. The primary object of the proposed institution is
the advance of knowledge and the opening up of new lines of thought,
which, it may be hoped, are to prove of great import to humanity. It
does not follow that the function of teaching shall be wholly foreign
to its activities. It must take up the best young men at the point
where universities leave them, and train them in the arts of thinking
and investigating. But this training will be beyond that which any
regular university is carrying out.