In justice, however, mention must be made of a number of institutions permitting scientific work without imposing any obligation to teach or onerous administrative duties. The U. S. Geological Survey, the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Institute may serve as examples. We must likewise remember that different individuals react quite differently to the necessity for teaching. Some of the most noted investigators—Rowland, for instance—find a moderate amount of lecturing positively stimulating. In a utopian republic of learning such individual variations would be carefully considered in the allotment of tasks. The association of the Lick Observatory with the University of California seems to approximate to ideal conditions, inasmuch as its highly trained astronomers are relieved of all academic duties but enjoy the privilege of lecturing to the students when the spirit moves them.
To return to the main question, the maladjustment between the specific scientific phase of our civilization and the general cultural life produces certain effects even more serious than those due to penury, administrative tyranny, and popular indifference, for they are less potent and do not so readily evoke defence-mechanisms on the victims’ part. There is, first of all, a curtailment of potential scientific achievement through the general deficiencies of the cultural environment.
Much has been said by both propagandists and detractors of German scholarship about the effects of intensive specialization. But an important feature commonly ignored in this connection is that in the country of its origin specialization is a concomitant and successor of a liberal education. Whatever strictures may be levelled at the traditional form of this preparatory training—and I have seen it criticized as severely by German writers as by any—the fact remains that the German university student has a broad cultural background such as his American counterpart too frequently lacks; and what is true of Germany holds with minor qualifications for other European countries.
A trivial example will serve to illustrate the possible advantages of a cultural foundation for very specialized research. Music is notoriously one of the salient features of German culture, not merely because Germany has produced great composers but because of the wide appreciation and quite general study of music. Artistically the knowledge of the piano or violin acquired by the average child in the typical German home may count for naught, yet in at least two branches of inquiry it may assume importance. The psychological aspect of acoustics is likely to attract and to be fruitfully cultivated by those conversant with musical technique, and they alone will be capable of grappling with the comparative problems presented by the study of primitive music—problems that would never occur to the average Anglo-Saxon field ethnologist, yet to which the German would apply his knowledge as spontaneously as he applies the multiplication table to a practical matter of everyday purchase.
As a matter of fact, all the phenomena of the universe are interrelated and, accordingly, the most important advances may be expected from a revelation of the less patent connections. For this purpose a diversity of interests with corresponding variety of information may be not only a favourable condition but a prerequisite. Helmholtz may have made an indifferent physician; but because he combined a medical practitioner’s knowledge with that of a physicist he was enabled to devise the ophthalmoscope. So it may be that not one out of ten thousand men who might apply themselves to higher mathematics would ever be able to advance mathematical theory, but it is certainly true that the manipulatory skill acquired would stand them in good stead not only in the exact sciences but in biology, psychology, and anthropometry, in all of which the theory of probability can be effectively applied to the phenomenon of variability.
I do not mean to assert that the average European student is an Admirable Crichton utilizing with multidexterity the most diverse methods of research and groups of fact. But I am convinced that many European workers produce more valuable work than equally able Americans for the sole reason that the European’s social heritage provides him with agencies ready-made for detecting correlations that must inevitably elude a vision narrower because deprived of the same artificial aid. The remedy lies in enriching the cultural atmosphere and in insisting on a broad educational training over and above that devoted to the specialist’s craftsmanship.
Important, however, as variety of information and interests doubtless are, one factor must take precedence in the scientist’s equipment—the spirit in which he approaches his scientific work as a whole. In this respect the point that would probably strike most European or, at all events, Continental scientists is the rarity in America of philosophical inquiries into the foundations of one’s scientific position. The contrast with German culture is of course sharp, and in many Teutonic works the national bent for epistemological discussion is undoubtedly carried to a point where it ceases to be palatable to those not to the manner born. Yet this tendency has a salutary effect in stimulating that contempt for mere authority which is indispensable for scientific progress. What our average American student should acquire above all is a stout faith in the virtues of reasoned nonconformism, and in this phrase adjective and noun are equally significant. On one hand, we must condemn the blind deference with which too many of our investigators accept the judgments of acknowledged greatness. What can be more ridiculous, e.g., than to make dogmas of the obiter dicta of a man like William James, the chief lesson of whose life is a resentment of academic traditionalism? Or, what shall we think of a celebrated biologist who decides the problem of Lamarckianism by a careful weighing not of arguments but of authorities? No one can approve of the grim ferocity, reminiscent of the literary feuds of Alexander Pope, with which German savants sometimes debate problems of theoretic interest. Yet even such billingsgate as Dührring levelled at Helmholtz is preferable to obsequious discipleship. It testifies, at all events, to the glorious belief that in the republic of learning fame and position count for naught, that the most illustrious scientist shall not be free from the criticism of the meanest Privatdozent, But the nonconformism should be rational. It is infantile to cling to leading-strings but it is no less childish to thrust out one’s tongue at doctrines that happen to disagree with those of one’s own clique. Indeed, frequently both forms of puerility are combined: it is easy to sneer with James at Wundt or to assault the selectionists under cover of De Vries’s mutationism. A mature thinker will forego the short and easy but misleading road. Following Fechner, he will be cautious in his belief but equally cautious in his disbelief.
It is only such spiritual freedom that makes the insistence on academic freedom a matter worth fighting for. After all, what is the use of a man’s teaching what he pleases, if he quite sincerely retails the current folk-lore? In one of the most remarkable chapters of the “Mechanik” Ernst Mach points out that the detriment to natural philosophy due to the political power of the Church is easily exaggerated. Science was retarded primarily not because scientists were driven by outward compulsion to spread such and such views but because they uncritically swallowed the cud of folk-belief. Voilà l’ennemi! In the insidious influence of group opinions, whether countenanced by Church, State or a scientific hierarchy, lies the basic peril. The philosophic habit of unremitting criticism of one’s basic assumptions is naturally repugnant to a young and naïve culture, and it cannot be expected to spring up spontaneously and flower luxuriantly in science while other departments of life fail to yield it nurture. Every phase of our civilization must be saturated with that spirit of positive scepticism which Goethe and Huxley taught before science can reap a full harvest in her own field. But her votaries, looking back upon the history of science, may well be emboldened to lead in the battle, and if the pioneers in the movement should fail they may well console themselves with Milton’s hero: “... and that strife was not inglorious, though the event was dire!”
Robert H. Lowie