Page:Scientia - Vol. X.djvu/111

Rh applied to their subject. At the outstart the enthusiasm of the biometric workers led to great expectations as to what the new science was going to accomplish. Because these expectations were in large degree based on an entire misconception of what mathematical methods could by any possibility do, they were not fulfilled, and this naturally led to more or less of a feeling of aversion to the whole subject. Such a result would have been inevitable whatever the quality of the biometric research done.

In the second place biometry has, most unfortunately, been taken to be a school of biological philosophy rather than what it really is a method of research. The great activity of biologists during the past decade in the analytical study of inheritance by the method of experimental breeding has served to establish on a firm basis certain fundamental principles of the physiology of the hereditary process (the principles of segregation, and of inheritance in « pure lines » in particular). It is further the fact that certain views regarding the method of evolution and of inheritance in plants and animals which have been upheld by certain leading bio- metrical authorities are, in regard to some fundamental points, utterly at variance with the result of these experimental investigations. By a regrettable confusion of thought, biometry is arraigned for the views on purely biological topics held by certain individuals. Surely the application of appropriate mathematical methods to aid in the solution of biological problems involves per se the maintainence of no particular theoretical position whatever with regard to the fundamental nature of biological processes or phenomena.

In the third place, it must be admitted that a good deal of the early work in biometry was of a superficial character, and made no contribution of moment either to biology or to biometric theory or practice. On account of the novelty of the view point an inexhaustible wealth of material lay ready to the hand of the biometrician. If a knowledge of the statistical facts of variation in organism A was a good thing to have, a similar knowledge for B ought also to be a good thing. Nothing could be simpler than to collect a lot of individuals, measure or count something, and then write a paper setting forth the results of this activity. Too often the enthusiasts who rushed into the new line of work seemed to expect the