Page:The Scientific Monthly vol. 3.djvu/553

 SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION 547

��THE STEATEGICS OP SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION

Bt Pbofessob T. BRAILSFORD ROBERTSON

T7NIVERSITT OT CALIFOBNIA

The thirty spokes unite in one nave; but it is upon the space for the axle that the use of the wheel depends.—^L&o-Tsze.

IN all ages and among all races since man first made his d6but upon our earthly stage, certain individuals have differed from their fel- lows in the possession in unusual measure of impersonal curiosity com- bined with powers of observation, comparison and generalization. Where historic record fails we can infer the existence of these indi- viduals from the heritage of knowledge which they conferred upon their descendants. Such knowledge did not come to man by revelation, or rather, let us say, the revelations of past ages did not differ in kind from those of our own time. The mental exertions which led to the development of the stone axe from the fortuitously encountered sharp fragment of flint did not differ in kind, possibly not even in degree, from those which led to the development of the aeroplane from a Chi- nese toy.

These individuals, whom I prefer to call investigators, avoiding alike the barbarism of the word '^ researcher *' and the restricted con- notations of the word "scientist,'* have but rarely, at any stage of the world's history, appeared of any importance in the eyes of the acknowl- edged rulers and leaders of mankind. In so far as they have occasion- ally combined charlatanry with science, as in the case of the ancient or medieval astrologers or a certain type of modern inventor, they have, it is true, occasionally achieved notoriety and the consequence attaching to the recipients of the beneficent toleration of rulers. In times of actual and impending disaster the desperate ruler not infrequently turned to his men of contemplation, to his astrologer, his magi or to Archimedes, with the helpless confidence with which the stricken pa- tient turns to the surgeon upon whose labors he has never bestowed a thought in his days of health. History repeats itself, because the poli- ticians and financiers of to-day are merely protean forms of the satraps and merchants of Persia, or the senators and bankers of old Home placed in a different material setting, and the parallel between the European governments of to-day turning desperately to science for aid in the extremity of their peril and the Oriental emperor who in a like pass appealed to his wise men who were versed in the stars, would be comic indeed, were it not so unutterably tragic.

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