Science and the scheme of things

✍ Scribed by Willis R. Whitney

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1944
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 369 KB
• Volume: 237
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0016-0032
• DOI: 10.1016/s0016-0032(44)90164-x

✦ Synopsis

How science can best be made to fit into the scheme of things." That was instigation "for a short article." Anything I could possibly" do for The Franklin Institute would be too little and too short to fit my wishes, but I can try.

In starting I join three words in proper sequence: Research, Science and Engineering. They suggest "getting it," "knowing it" and "doing something" about it. Being prejudiced, I believe that "getting it" comes first. To further clarify what I mean by "research," I need a word distinguishing research in science from "historical," "market," "metaphysical," "library," "economic" and other varieties. I like the name "pure" research. That is where some one (actually one) follows his inquisitiveness for purpose. That is the guide to ever-expanding wonders concealed in creation. It is a fine word when it includes all honest attempts to acquire still more truth. Storing such knowledge is not research. Applying it to human uses is engineering and manufacture.

To relieve myself of the feeling that I try to say weighty things, here are two items. In Conklin's "Man, Real and Ideal" he asks, as a naturalist, "What is Man?" and answers for himself, "Show me the specimens." That suggests my saying, "Show me the 'science,' the 'scheme,' and the 'things' referred to above." And as to my own Olanyone's effectiveness in the matter, let me remind you of Nash Buckingham's tale of the duck-hunter's negro guide, who, when asked to take a naval officer, accustomed to firing sixteen-inch guns, to his "duckblinds," feared that the admiral would destroy all the ducks in existence. No such thing happened. "They-all" did a lot of research and got some hunting experience and not a duck was shot.