Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 10.djvu/751

Rh of research arise from a misconception of what is really intended. It is ordinarily assumed that such endowments would merely provide large salaries and abundant leisure for certain scientific men, who, with no clearly-defined duties, and no distinct relation to each other, should try experiments at their own sweet will, and make discoveries whenever luck and chance were favorable. Such a vague plan for aiding science would of course be objectionable. Not only might the so-called "young men of promise" become deprived of energy by the ease of such positions, but even experienced workers would be liable to regard their salaries as the means of comfort without hard labor, or as a reward for past achievements. The money thus expended might advance science a little, but probably not so much as if it were paid over to some first-rate college or scientific school. Science is not to be truly encouraged by the creation of mere sinecures for scientific men. To construct an argument, however, against such a plan as the one mentioned, would only be to demolish a very clumsy man of very coarse straw. A true laboratory for research is something quite different from the feather-bed institution commonly objected to.

That there should be facilities for research, and that the investigator deserves a livelihood, nobody will deny. Indeed, these two points form an almost conclusive argument in favor of the endowment of laboratories. There is yet another consideration of very great force with which the public mind is less familiar. Both in chemistry and in physics there are many unsolved problems too great for individual students to grapple. Their solution can be effected only by the coöperation of many trained specialists, working harmoniously together upon the basis of some definite plan. The fundamental principles of physical science, principles upon which rest many applications important in the arts, and in which every manufacturer has a direct although too frequently unconscious interest, are to be eventually based upon the answers to these problems. In many a branch of industry thousands of dollars have been spent upon scientific experiments, which, for want of fundamental principles, have been aimless and unsystematic. Mere tentative trials, costly and laborious, with almost even chances for and against success, have taken the place of rigorous, careful, strictly scientific work, based upon definite and certain foundations. In short, the arts have suffered from the fact that neither chemistry nor physics can yet claim to be really an exact science. The question of the endowment of research, then, may well be put in this shape. Laboratories should be established in which adequate corps of thorough specialists shall coöperate in those investigations which individuals cannot undertake.

In a laboratory organized upon this idea, every worker should be assigned to definite, positive duties, the accurate and careful performance of which would eventually be sure to advance exact knowledge.