Play it again Sam

✍ Scribed by Donald R. Cahill; Mark F. Seifert

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1997
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 12 KB
• Volume: 10
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0897-3806
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1098-2353(1997)10:5<364::aid-ca16>3.0.co;2-i

✦ Synopsis

The advancement of scientific knowledge has been driven largely by seminal investigations, either theoretical or experimental in nature, and to a lesser extent by logical rethinking and rewriting of a subject to clarify and explain extant knowledge in that field. Perhaps the most common examples of the latter surface in textbook writing and classroom instruction. Reflecting upon our academic training and teaching experience, we pause to give special recognition to the gifted textbook authors and teachers who graciously acknowledged the original authorship of material they presented. This point was thoughtfully discussed by Wise (1995) who asked, ''Are we ignoring the contributions of the past?'' Thus we greatly admire the American anatomist Samuel Morton (1849), who wrote in the Preface of his book: ''In preparing this work for the press I have been influenced by the usual incentives to publication, one of which, and not the least, is the desire to be enrolled among the expositors of a science that has occupied many of the best years of my life. I need not be reminded that my enterprise must necessarily be devoid of that originality which gives charm to authorship: for a writer on special anatomy in our day must for the most part be content to clothe familiar facts in a new language. Nor is even this object always attainable in a path that has been trodden for centuries by ambitious and scrutinizing minds, who, like voyagers in search of undiscovered lands, have left comparatively little to reward the zeal of their successors.'' Morton did a superb job of explaining the state of structure and function of cells, tissues, and systems of the body (and their clinical correlations) as they were just beginning to be understood during the enlightened period in biology when the cell theory was coming to be accepted. It is humbling to read that Morton, 150 years ago, felt he was repackaging familiar facts, neither asserting original authorship of those facts nor casting to himself any illusion of natural knowledge.

Could it be that the major scientific discoveries have already been realized (splitting the atom, space travel, unraveling the mysteries of the natural world) and that we are in a refinement mode intellectually? We agree with Wise (1995), ''that just because the techniques of years ago may not have been as sophisticated as those of today, we should not assume that the minds that analyzed the data were unsophisticated.'' We embrace the importance of, and responsibility for, knowing and appropriately disseminating the logic and achievements of the past, and for using the insights thus gained to broaden scholarly understanding of our research fields and areas of instruction.