CHAPTER XIX

ORIGINAL RESEARCH

Knowledge as sought by disinterested inquirers . . . A plenteous harvest with but few reapers . . . Germany leads in original research . . . The Carnegie Institution at Washington.

We have now taken a rapid survey of invention and discovery in the fields of Form, Size, Properties, Measurement, and the Teachings of Nature. We will here somewhat change our point of view and bestow a glance at the characteristics of inventors and discoverers, noting their powers of observation and experiment, their patience from first to last in learning from other thinkers and workers past and present. What any one man, however able, can discover or invent, is the merest trifle in comparison with the resources accumulated since the dawn of human wit. And yet in adding a little to what he has learned, that little welds and vivifies his education as nothing else can. In setting out to add to known truth there must be a goodly equipment in knowledge and skill. Knowledge, therefore, may serve as a starting point for the survey before us.

Knowledge Necessary.

Success in discovery and invention, as in the case of a Newton or a Watt, depends not only upon rare natural faculty, but upon knowledge. Dr. Pye-Smith, of London, an eminent physician, says:--“Some would have us believe that erudition is a clog upon genius. This question has often been discussed, and it has even been maintained that he is most likely to search out the secrets of nature who comes fresh to the task with faculties unexhausted by prolonged reading, and his judgment uninfluenced by the discoveries of others. This, however, is surely a delusion. Harvey could not have discovered the circulation of the blood had he not been taught all that had been previously learned of anatomy. True, no progress can be made by the mere assimilation of previous knowledge. There must be an intelligent curiosity, an observant eye, and intellectual insight. Few things are more deplorable than to see talent and industry employed in fruitless researches, partly rediscovering what is already fully known, or stubbornly toiling along a road which has long ago been found to lead no whither. We must then instruct our students to the utmost of our power. Whether they will add to knowledge we cannot tell, but at least they shall not hinder its growth by their ignorance. The strong intellect will absorb and digest all that we put before it, and will be all the better fitted for independent research. The less powerful will at least be kept from false discoveries and will form, what genius itself requires, a competent and appreciative audience.”

American inventors echo the dictum of the English physician. Says Mr. Octave Chanute:--“It has taken many men to bring any great invention to perfection, the last successful man adding little to what was previously known. As a rule the basis of his success lies in a thorough acquaintance with what has been done before him, and his setting about his work in a thoroughly scientific way.” Professor W. A. Anthony observes:--“If the army of would-be inventors would enter the field with a full knowledge of what science has already done, the conquest of new territory would be rapidly accomplished.” To the same effect speaks Mr. Leicester Allen:--“While rarely there appears a man so highly endowed by nature with originating faculty that we call his talent genius, it will be found in the last analysis that his inventive power lies, not in some vague, mysterious intuition, but in a logical mind that can draw correct inferences from established premises; in an analytical mind that enables him to reason from correct data, discovering those which are false; in natural and cultivated perceptive faculties that enable him to determine the effect of a given set of conditions, and through exercise of which he is able to place clearly before his mental vision the exact statement or proposition which defines the thing to be accomplished; in the ability to concentrate his attention upon the problem in hand to the exclusion of everything else, for the time being, and a perseverance that will not be denied--that failure cannot wear out.”

Much is Still to be Discovered.

“To many,” says Sir Michael Foster, Professor of Physiology at Cambridge, “scientific knowledge seems to be advancing by leaps and bounds; every day brings its fresh discovery, opening up strange views, turning old ideas upside down. Yet every thoughtful man of science who has looked round on what others beside himself are doing will tell you that nothing weighs more heavily on his mind than this: the multitude of questions crying aloud to be answered, the fewness of those who have at once the ability, the means, and the opportunity of attempting to find the answers. Among the many wants of a needy age, few, if any, seem to him more pressing than that of the adequate encouragement and support of scientific research.” With his own field of science in view he continues: “We want to know more about the causation and spread of disease and about the circumstances affecting health before we can legislate with certainty of success. At home we want to know more about the spread of tubercle, of typhoid fever, and other infectious diseases; we want to know more about the proper means to secure that the water we drink, the food we eat, and the air we breathe, should not be channels of disease; we want to know more about the invisible elfic micro-organisms which swarm around us, to learn which are our friends, and which our foes, how to nourish the one, how to defeat the other; we want to know the best way to shield man in the factory and the workshop against the works of man.”

As to the fewness of those who have the highest capacity for original research, who have it in them to add to known truth in a notable way, Professor Simon Newcomb of Washington, the acknowledged dean of science in America, has said:--“It is impressive to think how few men we should have to remove from the earth during the past three centuries to have stopped the advance of our civilization. In the seventeenth century there would only have been Galileo, Newton and a few other contemporaries; in the eighteenth, they could almost have been counted on the fingers; and they have not crowded the nineteenth. Even to-day, almost every great institution for scientific research owes its being to some one man, who, as its founder or regenerator, breathed into it the breath of life. If we think of the human personality as comprehending not merely mind and body, but all that the brain has set in motion, then may the Greenwich Observatory of to-day be called Airy; that of Pulkowa, Struve; the German Reichsanstalt, Helmholtz; the Smithsonian Institution, Henry; the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoölogy, Agassiz; the Harvard Observatory, Pickering.”

Planning an Inquiry.

The late Professor Robert H. Thurston, of Cornell University, once said:--“Methods of planning scientific investigation involve, first, the precise definition of the problem to be solved; secondly, they include the ascertainment of ‘the state of the art,’ as the engineer would say, the revision of earlier work in the same and related fields, and the endeavor to bring all available knowledge into relation with the particular case in hand; then the investigator seeks information which will permit him, if possible, to frame some theory or hypothesis regarding the system into which he proposes to carry his experiment, his studies, and his logical work, such as will serve him as a guide in directing his work most effectively.

“The empirical, the imaginative, and even the guess work systems, or perhaps lack of system, have their place in scientific research. The dim Titanic figure of Copernicus seems to rear itself out of the dull flats around it, pierces with its head the mists that overshadow them and catches the first glimpse of the rising sun. But first Copernicus made a shrewd guess, and then followed with mathematical work and confirmation. . . . Kepler, also, was strong almost beyond competition in speculative subtlety and innate mathematical perception. . . . For nineteen years he guessed at the solution of a well-defined problem, finding his speculation wrong every time, until at last a final trial of a last hypothesis gave rise to deductions confirmed by observation. His first guess was that the orbits of the planets were circular, next that they were oval, and last that they were elliptical.”

Pascal, great in what he knew, was great also in what he was. Walter Pater thus depicts his powers:--“Hidden under the apparent exactions of his favorite studies, imagination, even in them, played a large part. Physics, mathematics, were with him largely matters of intuition, anticipation, precocious discovery, short cuts, superb guessing. It was the inventive element in his work, and his way of painting things that surprised those most able to judge. He might have discovered the mathematical sciences for himself, it is alleged, had his father, as he once had a mind to do, withheld him from instruction in them.”

No such gift of intuition as that displayed by Pascal fell to the lot of Buffon, who tells us:--“Invention depends on patience. Contemplate your subject long. It will gradually unfold itself, till an electric spark convulses the brain for a moment.”

As to the modes in which invention manifests itself, Mr. William H. Smyth says:--“Examine at random any one of half a dozen lines of mechanical invention, one characteristic common to them all will instantly arrest attention--they present nothing more than a mere outgrowth of the manual processes and machines of earlier times. Some operation, once performed by hand tools, is expedited by a device which enables the foot as well as the hand to be employed. Then power is applied; the hand or foot operation, or both, are made automatic, and possibly, as a still further improvement, several of these automatic devices are combined into one. All the while the fundamental basis is the old, original hand process; hence, except in the extremely improbable event that this was the best possible method, all the successive improvements are simply in the direction, not of real novelty, but of mere modification and multiplication. The most important and radical departures from old methods, by which many of the industries of the world have been completely revolutionized, are nearly always originated by persons wholly ignorant of the accepted practice in the particular industry concerned. The first and most important prerequisite to invention is an absolutely clear insight into, and a comprehensive grasp of, all the conditions involved in the problem. A scheme for the cultivation of invention should in part include:--(1) Accurate and methodical observation. (2) Cultivation of memory and the faculty of association. (3) Cultivation of clear visualization. (4) Logical reasoning from actual observation. The course should include exercises in drawing from simple objects, and the solution of a simple problem, such as that of a can-soldering machine.”

The Debt to Research in Medicine.

Investigators are never so useful as when thoroughly disinterested; let them find what they may, it will either have worth in itself or lead to something which has. Dr. Pye-Smith says:--

“Facts have been found at every step of science which were valueless at their discovery, but which, little by little, fell into line and led to applications of the highest importance--the observation of the tarnishing of silver, the twitching of the frog’s leg, were the origin of photography and telegraphy; the abstract problem of spontaneous generation gave rise to the antiseptics of surgery. . . . In medicine, as in every other practical art, progress depends upon knowledge, and knowledge must be pursued for its own sake without continually looking about for its practical applications. Harvey’s great discovery of the circulation of the blood was a strictly physiological discovery, and had little influence upon the healing art until the invention of auscultation. So, also, Dubois Reymond’s investigation of the electrical properties of muscle and nerve was purely scientific, but we use the results thus obtained every day in the diagnosis of disease, in its successful treatment, and in the scarcely less important demonstration of the falsehoods by which the name of electricity is used for purposes of gain. The experiments on blood pressure, begun by Hales, and carried to a successful issue in our own time by Ludwig, have already led to knowledge which we use every day by the bedside, and which only needs the discovery of a better method of measuring blood pressure during life to become one of our foremost and most practical aids in treatment. Again, we can most of us remember using very imperfect physiological knowledge to fix, more or less successfully, the locality of an organic lesion of the brain. I also remember such attempts being described as a mere scientific game, which could only be won after the player was beaten, since when the accuracy of diagnosis was established, its object was already lost; but who would say this now, when purely physiological research and purely diagnostic success have led to one of the most brilliant achievements of practical medicine, the operative treatment of organic diseases of the brain?”

The prevention of disease, as important as its cure, owes an incalculable debt to Louis Pasteur. De Varigny says in “Experimental Evolution”:--

“Pasteur, about 1850, spent a long time in seemingly very speculative and very idle studies of dissymmetry and symmetry in various crystals, especially those of tartaric acid; the practical value of such investigations seemed to be naught, and at all events it had no interest save for the elucidation of some points in crystallography. But this investigation led logically to the study of fermentation, and the final outcome of Pasteur’s work has been--leaving out the stepping stones--the discovery of the real cause of a large number of diseases, the cure of one of them, and the expectation, based on facts, that all these diseases can be defeated by appropriate methods.”

What is true in medicine is equally true in physics. Concerning the debt of the inventor to the man of physical research, Mr. Addison Browne has this to say:--

Research in Physics and Chemistry.

“A few weeks ago I was talking with an electrician who has made several very interesting and important inventions. I asked him of how much importance he conceived that the scientific men of the closet, the original investigators, so-called, had been in working out the great inventions of electricity during the last fifty years--telegraphs, cables, telephones, electric lighting, electric motors; and whether these achievements were not in reality due mainly to practical men, the inventors who knew what they were after, rather than to the men of science who rarely applied their work to practical use. He said, ‘The scientific men are of the utmost importance; everything that has been done has proceeded upon the basis of what they have previously discovered, and upon the principles and laws which they have laid down. Nowadays we never work at random--I go to my laboratory, study the application of the principles, facts and laws which the great scientists like Faraday, Thomson and Maxwell have worked out, and endeavor to find such devices as shall secure my aim.’ As Tyndall said, ‘Behind all our practical applications there is a region of intellectual action to which practical men have rarely contributed, but from which they draw all their supplies. Cut them off from that region and they become eventually helpless.’”

Research is golden only when brought to fruit by co-operation. To quote Professor Tyndall:--

“To keep science in healthy play three classes of workers are necessary: (1) The investigators of natural truth, whose vocation it is to pursue that truth, and extent the field of discovery for its own sake, without reference to practical ends. (2) The teachers who diffuse this knowledge. (3) The appliers of these principles and truths to make them available to the needs, the comforts, or the luxuries, of life. These three classes ought to co-exist and interact.”

Concerning the larger problems of engineering research, Professor Osborne Reynolds, of Owens College, Manchester, says:--

“Every one who has paid attention to the history of mechanical progress must have been impressed by the smallness in number of recorded attempts to decide the broader questions in engineering by systematic experiments, as well as by the great results which, in the long run, have apparently followed as the effect of these few researches. I say ‘apparently,’ because it is certain that there have been other researches which probably, on account of failure to attain some immediate object, have not been recorded, although they may have yielded valuable experience which, though not put on record, has, before it was forgotten, led to other attempts. But even discounting such lost researches it is very evident that mechanical science was in the past very much hampered by the want of sufficient inducement to the undertaking of experiments to settle questions of the utmost importance to scientific advance, but which have not promised pecuniary results, scientific questions which involved a greater sacrifice of time and money than the individuals could afford. The mechanical engineers recently induced Mr. Beauchamp Towers to carry out his celebrated researches on the friction of lubricated journals, the results of which research certainly claim notice as one of the most important steps in mechanical science.”

Lord Rayleigh has said:--

“The present development of electricity on a large scale depends as much upon the incandescent lamp as the dynamo. The success of these lamps demands a very perfect vacuum--not more than one millionth of the normal quantity of air should remain. It is interesting to recall that in 1865 such vacua were rare even in the laboratory of the physicist. It is pretty safe to say that these wonderful results would never have been accomplished had practical applications alone been in view. The way was prepared by an army of men whose main object was the advancement of knowledge, and who could scarcely have imagined that the processes which they had elaborated would soon be in use on a commercial scale and entrusted to the hands of ordinary workmen.” He adds:--“The requirements of practice react in the most healthy manner upon scientific electricity. Just as in former days the science received a stimulus from the application to telegraphy, under which everything relating to measurement on a small scale acquired an importance and development for which we might otherwise have had long to wait, so now the requirements of electric lighting are giving rise to a new development of the art of measurement on a large scale, which cannot fail to prove of scientific as well as practical importance.”

Regarding the territory likely to yield most fruit to the researcher, he observes:--“The neglected border land between two branches of knowledge is often that which best repays cultivation; or, to use a metaphor of Maxwell’s, the greatest benefits may be derived from a cross-fertilization of the sciences.”

The Example of Germany.

Why Germany leads the world in science becomes clear when we observe her co-ordination of industry with the higher education and with original research. Professor Wilhelm Ostwald has said:--“When the student in Germany has finished his university course he is still entirely free to choose between a scientific and a technical career. . . . The occupation of a technical chemist in works is very often almost as scientific in its character as in a university laboratory. . . . The organization of the power of invention in manufactures on a large scale in Germany is, as far as I know, unique in the world’s history, and is the very marrow of our splendid triumphs. Each large works has the greater part of its scientific staff--and there are often more than a hundred doctors of philosophy in a single manufactory--occupied not in the management of the manufacture, but in making inventions. The research laboratory in such works is only different from one in a university from its being more splendidly and sumptuously fitted. I have heard from the business managers of such works that they have not infrequently men who have worked for four years without practical success; but if they have known them to possess ability they keep them notwithstanding, and in most cases with ultimate success sufficient to pay all expenses.”

Mr. Carnegie’s Aid to Original Research.

In 1902 Mr. Andrew Carnegie, with a gift of ten million dollars, founded in Washington the Carnegie Institution for Original Research. Its president is Dr. R. S. Woodward, formerly of Columbia University, New York. One of its first enterprises was to establish at Cold Spring Harbor, New York, a station for experimental evolution directed by Dr. Charles B. Davenport. Here will be extended the remarkable experiments of Dr. Hugo de Vries, of Amsterdam, who discovered that the large-flowered evening primrose suddenly gives rise to new species. Other experiments are in progress with regard to the variability of insects, the hybridization of plants and animals. A marine biological laboratory has been established at Tortugas, Florida; and a desert botanical laboratory at Tucson, Arizona. In its grants for widely varied purposes the policy of the Institution is clear: only those inquiries are aided which give promise of fruit, and in every case the grantee requires to be a man of proved ability, care being taken not to duplicate work already in hand elsewhere, or to essay tasks of an industrial character. Experience has already shown it better to confine research to a few large projects rather than to aid many minor investigations with grants comparatively small.

One branch of the work reminds us of Mr. Carnegie’s method in establishing public libraries--the supplementing of local public spirit by a generous gift. In many cases a university or an observatory launches an inquiry which soon broadens out beyond the range of its own small funds; then it is that aid from the Carnegie Institution brings to port a ship that otherwise might remain at sea indefinitely. Let a few typical examples of this kind be mentioned:--Dudley Observatory, Albany, New York, and Lick Observatory, California, have received aid toward their observations and computations; Yerkes Observatory, Wisconsin, has been helped in measuring the distances of the fixed stars. Among other investigations promoted have been the study of the rare earths and the heat-treatment of some high-carbon steels. The adjacent field of engineering has not been neglected: funds have been granted for experiments on ship resistance and propulsion, for determining the value of high pressure steam in locomotive service. In geology an investigation of fundamental principles has been furthered, as also the specific problem of the flow of rocks under severe pressure. In his remarkable inquiry into the economy of foods, Professor W. O. Atwater, of Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, has had liberal help. In the allied science of preventive medicine a grant is advancing the study of snake venoms and defeating inoculations.

At a later day the Institution may possibly adopt plans recommended by eminent advisers of the rank of Professor Simon Newcomb, who points out that analysis and generalization are to-day much more needed than further observations of a routine kind. He has also had a weighty word to say regarding the desirability of bringing together for mutual attrition and discussion men in contiguous fields of work, who take the bearings of a great problem from different points of view.

Speaking of the study of human life and society, Professor Karl Pearson is clear that both thorough training as well as sound theories are needed if research is to be fruitful. In the course of a letter to the Carnegie Institution, he says:--“Biological and sociological observations in too many cases are of the lowest grade of value. Even where the observers have begun to realize that exact science is creeping into the biological and sociological fields they have not understood that a thorough training in the new methods is an essential preliminary for effective work, even for the collection of material. They have rushed to measure or count every living form they could hit on, without having planned at the start the conceptions and ideas that their observations were intended to illustrate. I doubt whether even a small proportion of the biometric data being accumulated in Europe and America could by any amount of ingenuity be made to provide valuable results, and the man capable of making it yield them would be better employed in collecting and reducing his own material.”

Professor Edward C. Pickering, Director of the Harvard Observatory, has suggested that astronomers the world over resolve themselves into a committee of the whole for the attack of great questions, the work to be duly parcelled out among the observatories best placed and equipped for specific tasks, to the end that repetition be avoided and a single, comprehensive plan be pursued. Not only in astronomy but in every field of science such concerted attack would have great value. In engineering, for example, there are questions as to the durability of steels and other building materials, which when investigated would yield rich harvests to every practicing engineer on the globe. It may be expected that in effecting co-ordinations of this kind the Carnegie Institution will play a notable part in the science of the twentieth century.