achieved largely through control over the environment, through the provision of devices for eliciting certain ideas and inhibiting others, for recording suggestions as they arise, for making them accessible to other persons, and for criticizing them according to approved canons which are themselves not immune from criticism. (4) The most important psychological factors making for discovery are interest and "the ripe mind." Men have often discovered things for which they were not looking, as we have seen, but they have seldom if ever made important discoveries except in connection with matters of deep concern to them. It is necessary to live with a problem before it begins to disclose its possibilities and relationships. The inventive, investigative mind must be very thoroughly seeped in its materials, and it is probably impossible to achieve this status without solidly founded emotional attachments to one's work. This is probably the basis for whatever slight amount of truth may be contained in the comfortable adage that "Genius is the capacity for taking infinite pains." What appears very much like drudgery from the outside, however, and would certainly require painstaking application for even mediocre mastery on the part of another, may really be joyous and exhilarating play to the man whose whole heart is in his work. 8 (5) Two or more persons often make the same, or very nearly the same, discovery independently and at almost the same time. Ogburn's list of these independent discoveries of the same thing contains a surprising number of items, although it is clearly incomplete. To name but a few cases out of the hundreds that are known: Newton and Leibniz independently invented the calculus; Bessemer and Kelly the means of purifying cast iron by blowing air through it; Edison and Swan the electric light; Lister and Pasteur independently arrived at the connection between dirt and putrefaction; Darwin and Wallace while working in isolation developed the theory of evolution by means of natural selection and the survival of the fittest. This last instance is extremely interesting, for it reveals some of the social mechanisms at work. Both investigators agreed that they had been helped to the formulation of the theory through a reading of Malthus's famous essay on the principle of population, which deals with the connection between the growth of population and the food supply, and happens at one point to make use of the phrase "the struggle for existence." To both Darwin and Wallace this phrase was luminous with meaning when they chanced upon it, and it was the occasion of leading them independently to essentially the same solution of the problem of evolution. The evidence is therefore strong that important inventions and discoveries are a function of the time as well as of the individual. Certain ideas fit easily and fruitfully into the prevailing conceptions, and therefore may almost be counted upon to make their appearance, whereas other notions which may perhaps be equally sound have little chance of seeming reasonable, since they cut across all the established ways of thinking. Even unpopular notions are seldom if ever developed in complete independence of a tradition, for upon inspection they are found to rest either upon the prevailing ideas or upon a minority tradition. It is not necessary, of course, to believe that all inventions and discoveries are directly and intimately related to the social heritage, for some leeway must be left for the operations of mere chance; but the dependence beyond question exists in all but a very small number of cases. (6) Discoveries of great importance often lie fallow for a considerable time. Unless a man's work accords fairly well with the prevailing spirit of his time and place, it is hardly likely that it will be favorably noticed. From this point of view it is just as embarrassing to be ahead of one's age as behind it, just as unsatisfactory to be right as wrong. Appreciation and recognition may come with the lapse of time, but there is always an excellent chance that one's work will be buried forever, and that some future investigator will be forced to go over much the same ground at a more propitious time. Perhaps the most interesting resurrection of long ignored work is that of Mendel's highly original researches into plant hybridization, which were published in 1866 and re mained hidden away in an obscure publication until the spring of 1900, when they were almost simultaneously resuscitated by De Vries, Correns, and Tschermak, who had independently conducted researches of a very similar character. Since then Mendel's investigations have become the basis of modern biology. His investigations were ignored, we may be sure, not because they appeared in an obscure source, for they must have been glanced at by scores of biologists in the thirty years following their publication, but because they were not in accord with the prevailing trends in biology. On all sides, then, we are compelled to recognize the influence of the culture pattern in determining the course of invention and discovery. The existing social forms, embedded to various degrees and in various relations in the minds of individual members of the group, according to their personal experiences, are acted upon by the interests and other affective urges of the individual-themselves also almost entirely social creations and slowly submit to change. Most of these changes are extremely small, and are of general cultural significance only when summed, but a very few establish new leads and set men working in novel directions. These are the great discoveries and inventions. Important as they are, however, they occur according to precisely the same mechanisms as determine lesser changes. REFERENCES 1 William James, The Will to Believe, and other essays in popular philosophy (N. Y., Longmans, Green, 1896), 1–31. 2 Karl Pearson, The Grammar of Science, Part 1-Physical (3 ed., London, Black, 1911), 59. 3 Cf. Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (N. Y., Harcourt, Brace, 1922), esp. Parts I-III. 4 Walter Lippmann, The Phantom Public (N. Y., Harcourt, Brace, 1925), 144– 145. H. A. Ruger, The Psychology of Efficiency, An experimental study of the proc esses involved in the solution of mechanical puzzles and the acquisition of skill in their manipulation. Archives of Psych., No. 15 (N. Y., Science Press, 1910). A. P. M. Fleming and H. J. Brocklehurst, A History of Engineering (London, Black, 1915), 128. 7 W. H. R. Rivers, Conflict and Dream (N. Y., Harcourt, Brace, 1923), 7. 8 W. F. Ogburn, Social Change, With respect to culture and original nature (N. Y., Huebsch, 1922), 90–102. |