THE INSTRUMENTS AND METHODS OF

RESEARCH.

BY

L. A. BAUER.

(Address of the retiring President, delivered before the Society, Saturday evening, December 5, 1908.)

Were I to accuse you of forgetfulness, of shortness of memory, or possessed of that quality apt to prove troublesome to others, though characterized by the oldest of our past presidents, in his delightful "Reminiscences of an Astronomer," as a valuable quality-absent-mindedness-I dare say you would not be much offended, though possibly a trifle annoyed. But were I to accuse you of narrow-mindedness I might meet with a different reception. To none of us would it matter much to be called short-memoried or absentminded, but to be termed narrow-minded arouses our resentment immediately. But are we not all necessarily so, more or less, according to the circumstances in which we find ourselves?

MIND THE CHIEF INSTRUMENT OF RESEARCH.

I believe it was the mathematical physicist Stokes who said we must not forget that the chief instrument of investigation-the mind-is itself the object of research. To the Mind, then, we should devote our first and chief attention in the discussion of the subject set for this evening. How to reduce and check as far as possible this natural tendency of all of us to narrow-mindedness in one or more directions, or how, realizing its necessary existence, to make due allowance for it in the formulation of conclusions which, though

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drawn with utmost care, are nevertheless subject to a "personal equation," is, as we at once readily see, a matter of the very highest importance.

Many of you are doubtless familiar with the Hindoo fable set to rhyme by Saxe:

"It was six men of Indoostan

To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),

That each by observation

Might satisfy his mind.

"The First approached the Elephant,
And happening to fall

Against his broad and sturdy side,

At once began to bawl:

'God bless me! but the Elephant

Is very like a wall!'

"The Second, feeling of the tusk,

Cried, 'Ho! what have we here

So very round and smooth and sharp?

To me 'tis mighty clear

This wonder of an Elephant

Is very like a spear!"

The third, happening to grasp the "squirming trunk within his hands," declared the elephant to be "very like a snake;" the fourth, feeling "about the knee," thought the elephant seemed "very like a tree;" the fifth, "chancing to touch the elephant's ear," described him as being "very like a fan," and when within the scope of the sixth came the swinging tail, the fact that the elephant "is very like a rope" was to him proved beyond dispute.

"And so these men of Indoostan

Disputed loud and long,

Each in his own opinion

Exceeding stiff and strong,

Though each was partly in the right,

And all were in the wrong!"

And now, if you will permit me to slightly alter the poet's last verse, so as to point the moral to our own selves:

"How oft in scientific wars

We disputants are seen
To rail in utter ignorance

Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of us has seen!"

WHAT IS RESEARCH?

In this day of encyclopedias numerous and ponderous, one is often struck with the fact that in spite of the manifest care and conscientious thought bestowed by the responsible editors, the omissions and evidences of discontinuity of treatment, and lack of recognition of the prime purposes of the compilation are as noteworthy as the imposing array of the results of our steadily advancing knowledge is startling. For a philosophic treatment-one fully appreciative of that which the student really requires, not only to enlighten him with regard to a particular subject, but also to stimulate him to research where it is most needed-I frequently get more satisfaction out of the older encyclopedias than from our modern ones, even though they can but present the status of the subject up to the time they were written.

As an illustration, take the word "research," appearing in our topic of this evening, or any of the associated terms"discovery," "experiment," "investigation," and "observation." Turning to the index volumes of the ninth and tenth editions of the "Encyclopædia Britannica," I find but two references in which the word "research" appears-one to the exploring vessel, the "Research," and the other to "research degrees." Turning to the page on which the latter occurs, we find this interesting statement referring to Oxford University:

"New degrees for the encouragement of research, the B.Lit. and B.Sc. (founded in 1895, and completed in 1900 by the institution of research doctorates), have attracted graduates from the universities of other countries. In 1899 a